Berry red, berry blue

“If you’ll take the whole flat you can have it for $10,” the berrylady said, pointing to gorgeous heaps of blackberries.

I’d come late to the Portland Farmers’ Market AGAIN–I keep having early Saturday appointments that mean I don’t arrive until 2 or 3 in the afternoon, when everyone’s closing. The berrylady was one of the few still open, and she was trying to lighten the homeward load with a great deal: Huge, ripe blackberries for about 83 cents per pint (in grocery stores right now, they’re about $2.75/pint)

“I’ll take them! A whole flat of blackberries!” I agreed happily.

“Marionberries,” she corrected, “We have to call them MARIONberries because Oregonians HATE blackberries.”

OK, that’s just sad.

For some reason your average Oregonian feels friendlier toward whale-nuking scofflaws than the innocent blackberry vine. I’ve had friends stop on the way to my front door and pull up the blackberries in my flowerbeds. “HEY STOP THAT!!” I’ll scream, “I LIKE BLACKBERRIES!!!!”…which usually lets me in for a ten-minute lecture on invasive species and my responsibilities as a landowner.

I swear, if I were a gardener, every single invasive weedy plant in Oregon would find safe refuge in my garden.* I’ve never quite understood why gardeners cultivate the stuff that DOESN’T want to grow and whack/burn/poison/yank the stuff that does.

Geeez. I’ll bet one of the reasons it’s so hard to find good blackberries around here is that Oregonians are so hell-bent on decimating them. Berry terrorists, the lot of them.

No matter. At my house we currently have blackberries, gooseberries, currants, raspberries (big, sweet, juicy ones nearly two inches long)…and my very own blueberries.

My blueberry bushes were late this year–the weather was unkind to berries–but at last they’re ripening, stuffed to the brim with hot sweet juice. There’s only about a third as many and their flavor isn’t quite as burstingly winey as last year–those blueberries whacked you in the head with blueberryness–but they’re still about ten times better than store-bought, or even farm-bought.

I know I ought to be freezing or preserving some of this bounty for the winter…but fresh berries are just too irresistible. I parceled out this weekend’s crop to my sister Suzi’s family  and my folks. Suzi’s got one of the most impressive vegetable gardens in the area (if you’re a fan of kale and new potatoes you should visit)–but oddly enough, she hasn’t a single berry plant.

Apparently berries are a real liability when you live on a mountain; there are at least three bears in the neighborhood eager to turn Suzi’s garden into a you-pick berry patch. Suzi’s been advised to buy her berries at the farmer’s market and keep them inside.

That lets me feel like a gracious farmer providing the less fortunate with blueberries, and if my fingers are stained purply blue for the next two months, who cares?

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*According to my garden-happy friends, they already do.

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