Second blackberries

Original snap

Zoomed in, near the top

Out early and full of beans today, so on the way back from Jubilee Way, called in at the entrance to Hook Road Arena for a second pick this morning. The place which I had intended to pick yesterday. Yesterday's first pick being noticed at reference 1.

Lots of berries. Very big and ripe at the first stand, rather smaller at the second. Presumably a different variety. Now trayed up and in the freezer.

Plants mixed in, at the margins, with convolvulus, dog rose and nettles. Plus quite a lot of the blue flowers which can be seen top middle in the second snap above. Identification will a job for this evening. In the meantime, impressed by how well zoom does, in this case by a factor of 10, according to Microsoft Photos.

I still regret not buying the Oxford handbook to the blackberry family, that is to say the rubus genus (or possibly sub-genus), listing, as I recall, a couple of hundred varieties of blackberry. But the shop in question wanted a realistic price, perhaps £20 rather than a charity shop price, so I desisted, despite it being a proper botanists' book, full of careful line drawings of said couple of hundred varieties.

A quick search of the OUP site and that of Abebooks reveals nothing. Ebay does much better with a variety of learned blackberry books, mostly, for some reason, in German. But nothing like the book I have in mind, a book with pale blue dust jacket, dark blue hard cover, about six inches by four and getting on for two inches thick. Very curious.

As well as blackberries, the arena was also host to some swallows, swooping over the expanse of perhaps recently mown grass. Not that they ever let it get very long; more recreation ground than meadow. The first swallows I have seen for a while.

PS: the blackberry references in Wikipedia were not very helpful. But they did include reference 2, all about my birthday, it seems the last day on which it is proper to pick blackberries. Something to do with a bit of Irish wisdom to the effect that 'On Michaelmas Day the devil puts his foot on blackberries'. Perhaps blackberries are in season on the other island a good deal later in the year than they are on this one.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/07/first-blackberries.html.

Reference 2: https://www.historic-uk.com/CultureUK/Michaelmas/.