Foraging in the hedgerow

When The Boy surfaced this morning he suggested we go out elderberry picking. Well I was so eager to get out harvesting the berries for our delicious wine, that I completely forgot to take my camera with me. As usual when that happens, there was opportunity upon opportunity for great shots. In a way, it's probably good as I might have been distracted from the task at hand.

We had a good afternoon picking berries. There was a slight worry when we realised someone had beaten us to it. We soon realised that those before us had only picked to head height and hadn't even picked up the bunches they'd dropped. With The Boy on grabbing branches and pulling them down to within my grasp we managed to harvest 4 baby ikea bags full of berries (and the odd bramble too).

When we got home I stood on the scales noted my weight, and then The Boy loaded me up with bags. Did the maths and we'd got 10 lbs, not bad but slightly disappointing compared to previous years when we got enough for 5 gallons and cordial. It was only later in the day, perched on the edge of the bath with elderberries at my feet, bowl in lap and fork in hand that I realised in my calculations, that I'd missed an entire stone. 24 lbs! Fantastic!

We picked the bunch of green berries in this shot for identification. All the other trees had ripened in patches with different berries on a cluster ripening at different stages, however this bush every single berry on the tree was at the same stage, so much so that we wondered if it was an elder or not.

In other news:

So many shield bugs came out to play today.