For the past month, every couple of days I have been able to go outside and pick myself at least a pint of raspberries from the bushes alongside our porch. Growing up, raspberries, and macadamia nuts, were considered the height of luxury. According to my mother buying pints of raspberries, or leaving out a bowl of macadamia nuts for general consumption, was something that only “swells” did when they wanted to show off. You might get lucky and get a very small jar of macadamia nuts in the toe of your Christmas stocking, but only occasionally would my mother buy a single pint of raspberries for the whole family to share, and then only in the summer. She would carefully parse them out to all of us, perhaps even counting them, while saying under her breath, “these things probably cost about a dime each.” My grandmother in Cleveland had a very large raspberry patch on her farm, with the bushes spread out enough that there was a mowed path between the rows, and you could just saunter down the row, popping them into your mouth. I wanted to move there. Several times my mother tried to grow her own raspberries, but they always failed, and she would look at her shriveled bushes in disgust, and then finally she quit trying.
And now here I amwith bowls overflowing with raspberries. This is something that I thought would never happen for me. In fact, growing up I had more faith that one day I would meet the man of my dreams and have a blissful marriage. Well, that did indeed happen so maybe I shouldn’t be too surprised about my good luck with raspberries. Nick planted four bushes for me about a year ago along the north side of the house, which should have been a loser location. Most recommend a southern exposure. The first summer, there were only a few berries, and earlier this summer, I didn’t give them much of a chance due to the overwhelming heat. But the raspberry’s life quietly went on. Insects of some sort must have shown up to pollinate the flowers (which I never even noticed in the first place) and intricate and unseen cycles of water, sunlight and dirt did the rest. This month, the bushes have taken off and are now hang low with clusters of ripe berries. Some of the branches are pressed up against the porch, and when the wind blows I see and hear the red berries scratching against the screens. When I first started picking them, I gently plucked them, and if one happened to tumble into the bush, I would carefully part the thorny branch and try to retrieve it. With the new found abundance, there is no time for such tender care. Now, if I drop a berry, I just abandon it, and the stone walk has splotches of red where I have stepped on discarded raspberries. This would have been utterly unthinkable just two months ago. And even more remarkable, I am almost ready to undo my natural hoarding instinct and start giving them away.
What can be more perfect than a raspberry? The perfect little cap composed of the little septated mini-berries, all snuggled together, which gives it a very homey feel, like that rare cohesive and mutually supportive family where everyone gets along. It turns out the each little berrylet is actually a tiny fruit, so that the berry itself is really an aggregate of fruits. The 
combination of a fleshy fruit surrounding a seed is called a drupe – for example a peach is a type of drupe. And since the individual raspberry fruit is so diminutive, it called a drupelet. This is in contrast to the seeds of the strawberry, which arise from a different part of the flower’s ovary. They are called achenes – but this type of distinction is probably only of interest to those who like to argue about whether the tomato is a fruit or a vegetable. The point is that the raspberry is the perfect size and shape to press into the roof of your mouth releasing the sweet juice and flesh. Nick has been crabbing for years that raspberry seeds get caught in his teeth, and I have been patiently trying to instruct him that, unlike strawberries, raspberries are not meant to be bitten but softly rolled around in the mouth. After over 30 years of futility, I figure that it’s his loss.
Yesterday I was picking in a stiff wind and I began to appreciate the challenges of the professional berry picker. The small prickly thorns forced me to grab the swaying branch by the leaf, which then might break off, sending a cluster of unripe raspberries to their doom. I’ve always known that the opposable thumb was one of the keys to our position at 
the top of the food chain, but picking berries is a marvelous illustration of the genius of the human hand. As an experiment, I tried to pick a berry with my two index fingers, but it was a clumsy and totally inefficient affair. We vacation in the upper peninsula of Michigan and often find thick fields of wild raspberries growing in the disturbed aftermath of logging. And where there are raspberries there are black bears, and as you are picking along the roadside it is disconcerting to spot the tell tale scat brimming with raspberry seeds. But the bear can only rely on big fleshy tongue. I tried to simulate a bear with my tongue stuck into a bush, and while I could nab a few berries with my teeth, I certainly didn’t relish the prospect of raking my tongue across the prickly branch. I smugly pitied the bear.
It takes me about 20 minutes to pick a pint of raspberries using my very nifty opposable thumbs, and even acknowledging that a professional picker could cut my time in half, I find it hard to believe that all raspberries are hand picked. And sure enough, clever engineers, the ultimate problem solvers, have developed a mechanical picker. The picker is essentially a tractor that straddles a row of raspberries. As the tractor moves down the row, the raspberry bush enters a “shaker” which looks like two oversized scrub brushes that vibrate and rotate, and take advantage of the fact that only 
the ripest berries will fall onto a conveyer belt. The unripe berries are theoretically unharmed, and the process can be repeated every couple of days as successive waves of berries turn red. While the mechanical picker looks like the epitome of efficiency, it is still hard to believe that the berries don’t get damaged in the process, or even fall off. In fact when I vigorously shook one of our bushes, no berries fell off. Furthermore, the mechanical picker requires some poor soul to sit and watch an endless conveyer belt of raspberries go by, on the look-out for the unripe or squashed berry or any other debris that might 
show up. I am reminded of the episode of I Love Lucy, where Lucy and Ethel are working on the assembly line, supposedly doing quality control on chocolate candies. The conveyor belt gets ahead of them, and Lucy madly tries to catch up by popping the candies in her mouth or putting them under her hat or down her shirt.
Now I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but there is one small slight improvement that I would appreciate. No, I don’t need seedless raspberries, since I have the seed issue solved with my roof of the mouth technique. And I don’t need a thornless bush, because I appreciate the mixed message of the forbidden fruit – the luscious berries surrounded by thorns. I do feel a little silly saying this, because I have been so blessed with my raspberries this year, but isn’t it entirely human to always dream a little bigger? So okay, here it is. I wouldn’t mind a square raspberry. Right now, when I load up my toast with raspberries, they start to roll around when I take a bite. They might roll off onto the table, where I then squish them with my elbow as I work on the morning crossword puzzle, or they might land on the floor where I squish them with my stockinged foot – one time I tracked a flattened raspberry half way across the room. There is a raspberry stain on our wooden kitchen table, and I have shirts and socks that are permanently stained. Yep, a square raspberry sure would be nice.
The missing words in the following poem are anagrams (i.e. share the same letters like spot, post, stop) and the number of asterisks indicates the number of letters. Your job is to solve the missing words based on the above rules and the context of the poem. Scroll down for answers.
Fruit seeds can be divided into several different groups
Strawberries are achenes, while raspberries are ******
For my purposes, it’s ideal that one word is part of an anagram set
For example, ****** disapprove of any lapse in hoity-toity etiquette
And if you got lost and were trying to find your friends in a crowd,
You might have ****** your lips together and whistled out loud.
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
drupes, prudes, pursed
Follow Liza Blue on:
Share:
