Pickin', pullin' and grinnin'

My summer hands will tell you I'm a gatherer. I gather things from the ground, from bushes, and from trees, and it takes a toll on digital beauty. Broken off finger-nails, soil-filled ruts meandering all directions on the finger tips, and the lines running along the palm so etched and enhanced by Mother Earth that a palm reader would smile with the ease of reading my fortunes.

The past month has launched the beginnings of the picking, pulling and grinning season. Most of the hand damage has come from daily assaults on a healthy crop of fast-growing, rebounding weeds. Several hours of any day here could be spent pulling weeds or grass from the garden and flower beds. And, I do put in my fair share of time, as my hands so vividly attest.

The gathering season so far has included radishes, lettuce, tomatoes, swiss chard, spinach, a few beans, two gallons of cherries (thanks, Cis, for the CD idea), asparagus, strawberries, onions and dewberries.

And, I must talk about the latter.

I have found the mother lode of purple and black reminders of my youth where warm July mornings usually found me walking through tall, dusty grass and avoiding snakes along ditches of North Boyer and Woodland Drive (at the time, it was just know as the back road). When I got past the notion that a bear lurked behind every bush in the woods, I traveled that area too with bucket or pint jar in hand and fingers ready for picking.

Picking dewberries still remains a nostalgic memory of my youth. It ranks right up there with my ever-present desire to find every pop or beer bottle flung from a car. In those days, the bottles meant cold, hard cash down at the bottling company, and the dewberries meant pie or a jar of tasty, tart jelly at the kitchen table. I appreciated both.

So, when I went for a bike ride on fall day last year and discovered a place loaded with those telltale vines flowing across the forested ground and along the roadside ditches, I took note and said to myself, "Be sure to call and get permission next summer when the berries come on."

Well, the berries are coming on, and I've got permission. So, twice these farm-branded fingers have done the walking through the stickers to gather an abundance of berry riches, bound for a saucepan and later some canning jars. So far, I've picked three quarters of a gallon of dewberries, and my hands have the embedded berry splinters to prove it.

In my lifetime, I cannot remember a season where I gathered more than a quart for sampling the distinctive flavor of that rare jelly or pie delicacy. We always knew with dewberries to enjoy every bite because it would be another year before we could experience a taste like that again.

This year, I could go picking for the next several days and probably gather at least a couple of gallons more. Just have to decide that the time and sliver-filled fingers would allow it.

In the meantime, I'm thrilled to have recaptured a wonderful summer image of my younger days. Who could feel 61 while moments associated with a charmed, rural adolescence take over as the fingers pick away at the purple and black prizes on those prickly vines!

And, to know there's plenty more pickin' and pulling to be had in the garden and yard and maybe even at the mountain huckleberry patches over the next few weeks keeps me grinnin' with sheer delight.