Raspberries bring out memories (07/14/2008)

It was just a small ad in the newspaper but it caught my attention. It offered raspberries for sale. The only problem was that the business was not open outside of my normal working hours. I'm too cheap to waste a vacation day to go berry picking.

I love black raspberries. The red ones are better than nothing and the golden ones don't taste nearly as wonderful as I remember. Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, black raspberries are fragile and don't ship well so they rarely appear at the grocery store. When they do, they are more expensive than anything else in the produce aisle.

According to myth, raspberries were originally white. The nymph Ida pricked her finger while picking some for the crying infant Jupiter. The story goes that raspberries have since been tinged red with her blood. That sounds rather icky to me. (The botanical name of the raspberry is Rubus idaeus. Rubus means 'red', and idaeus means 'belonging to Ida'). This tale doesn't explain black or golden raspberries at all. Personally the only Ida I have ever heard of was my grandfather's sister.

We used to visit Aunt Ida when we lived in Dayton. We would walk across the railroad tracks, past the house where Mom tore her skirt when she climbed the surrounding wall, and past Webster school. I still remember how peaceful her house was and the ceramic Dalmatian that sat in her living room. Those memories are as sweet as the raspberries I was talking about.

I have one raspberry plant at home. It moves every year and produces just enough fruit to nibble on the way into the house. My husband thinks the little black orbs are sour so I get to keep them all for myself. The birds and rabbits think they should share in the sweetness and sometimes beat me to the plants.

The crowns and roots of raspberry plants are supposed to be perennial, individual canes usually live two years. The plants produce canes from buds on the crown and on underground lateral stems. These canes grow during the first season, and produce fruit during the summer of the second year. New canes emerge each year to provide a crop for the following year. At least this is how they are supposed to behave.

In my garden they grow and produce fruit when they feel like it. They move to a different location each year so that every spring I am convinced they didn't live though the winter. Then one day they reach out and grab me with their stickery canes and let me know they survived.

Supposedly they can provide fruit for 10 to 20 years. We had wild raspberries on our farm and I have no doubt that they are still there if nobody cleaned up the fencerow.

I remember picking buckets full of them. My grandmother would make pies, jams and jellies from the bounty. Even though I am not a big fan of pie, I remember it all as being delicious.

Funny, I don't remember getting eaten up by mosquitoes or being scratched by branches. I only remember the taste of the dark purple fruit and how it stained my skin.

I read that Martin Van Buren, while campaigning for the presidency in 1840, was said by his opponents to "wallow in raspberries". This was to imply shocking extravagance. The poor man would have been purple from head to toe if he really had done that. Come to think of it, that would be kind of funny to have a purple presidential candidate. Talk about a candidate for change ...

It was just a little ad but it took me back to my childhood, to a past president, a dead great-aunt, and ended up in my own backyard. I'll probably pick the last two or three berries tonight and that will be all until next year. Or maybe I can find a raspberry farm that is open on Saturday and I can pick (and nibble) to my heart's content.

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