Colm O'Regan: Fearing the wrath of briars on the blackberry pick
Pic: iStock
You have to hand it to briars. But make sure you’re wearing gloves.
With the greatest blackberry crop in years staining fronts of jumpers and soft furnishings all over the country, there’s a strong chance more and more of us are picking against the pricks.
Apparently, the blackberries are good this year because of the heatwave in June – remember that, yes that was also this year! – made for great blossoms.
This got the bees all hot under the collar and they pollinated like mad.
Then in July, the rain filled up the blackberries so that’s why they’re so juicy now, they’re practically floating jam.
If you can get to them. Some of the briars are clearly guards.
They have no berries on them and their only function is to snag you.
Just out of reach is the motherlode but even after I sent Mam in, she can’t get to them either. Those ones, it seems, are for the birds.
We can’t be too far away from the days when some massive tech company – presumably Blackberry – is monopolising the sméara dubha market with drones that pick everything before the pine martens and the finches even get a go.
Or just straight up hiring birds and then letting them go with non-disclosure agreements and no compensation in October.
Back to the thorny issue. I simply cannot get over the bloody-mindedness of brambles. Literally.
I have just tripped over a sneaky sucker that was stretched across a path. It had no apparent function. Just pure badness.
I’m looking now at briars that grew in through the window of an old shed and then produced luscious fruit INDOORS.
They’re gleaning the necessary sunlight from a door that swings open now and then.
They look haunted or forbidden. As if, when you ate them a vengeful witch would appear and condemn you for daring to try and satisfy your wife’s pregnancy-related food cravings.
I’m not a fool. I know not to mess with enchanted berries. So I gave those ones to my children.
They seem fine although the curse did manifest itself in me having to wash all their clothes. I honestly don’t know what they were doing with the blackberries. It’s like they had some sort of last-days-of-Rome party with them.
But as the briars sneak eerily in the window, I can’t help thinking that one day they will take over.
We’re worried about sentient computers but some Tuesday, a briar will figure out how to read and hold a gun and then it’s game over.
So we should fear the briar and not leave any documentation lying around or make it angry by cutting it.
Years ago the TV show The Triffids posited a future with killer plants that blinded you, but in hindsight, the special effects meant it just looks like someone hiding behind rubbery rhubarb. They should remake it with briars.
We’ve always respected the bastardy of briars. It’s not for nothing that the other name of Sleeping Beauty was Little Briar Rose. When the wicked witch locked her away in that castle, she knew exactly what she was doing.
But if something in nature is a bit of a hoor for us that must mean it’s good for everything else.
The birds, the bees, the bats, the gnats – so many things don’t seem to have a problem with thorns.
The berries have all sorts of vitamins in them - Vitamin A Thiamine (B1), Riboflavin (B2), Niacin (B3), Vitamin B6 Folate (B9), and Vitamins C, E, and Vitamin K (Krumble).
You wouldn’t think it, but also, briars shelter young saplings and protect them from deer.
Apparently deer like eating briars.
There is an old saying, “The thorn is a friend to the oak,” to which I might add, “but it can just about tolerate folk.”
