Blackberries and Siamese Cats

My Dad loved blackberries and made blackberry wine as well as jam.  He never tried domesticated thornless blackberries though; he loved anything free and blackberry plants are free along roadsides and fence rows in the South.   He would dig up the wild blackberries and transplant them closer and closer to his home.  He transplanted the plants with the weeds and briars that always accompany blackberries. He was able to mow around the patches as they grew but it was still a difficult pick that resulted in bleeding arms, pricked fingers and surprise critters.

When I was young and living at home, summer was blackberry picking time.  Mom would hand me a big bucket and point to the door.  Every year from the time the blackberries were ripe for picking until we went back to school, I suffered the ill-effects of chiggers and poison ivy found in the blackberry patches.  I swore that I would have a blackberry patch without the extras one day.

In 2013 I moved my domesticated, thornless blackberry plants that were barely living and planted on the fringes of our mature oak trees to their own raised bed garden.  I mixed their soil with chicken manure and oak leaves, coffee grounds and grass clippings.  I planted irises between them.  Then I waited for 2014.

In 2014, the blackberry plants produced like crazy.  Mike and I picked, and picked, and picked.  We had blackberry cobbler, blackberry pancakes, fresh blackberries and my favorite blackberry jam.  We gave blackberry jam to all my co-workers, my neighbor and my brother.  I finally had blackberries to eat and share and freeze and absolutely loved it.  Jima and I pulled the old canes out this year, wired up the new canes which are probably 12 foot long or more.  There are no chiggers, no ticks, no snakes, no thorns and no weeds in my blackberry patch but there are Siamese cats.

I have heard that other people have trouble with birds destroying their almost ripe blackberries.  I didn't this year and hope that continues in the future.  I think I did not have any issue because of two Siamese cats.   The black Siamese sisters are named Blackberry and Huckleberry and Blackberry, per her namesake, has a special affinity for the blackberry patch where  she waits for unsuspecting birds and human hands or feet.  There were many blackberry picking sessions that had to be interrupted to chase the cat out of the blackberry patch first.  Blackberry is incredibly sneaky and as a kitten could wait for the absolute perfect time to pounce on a hand reaching into the thick blackberry leaves concealing her.  It would first startle me and then the work of ejecting the cat from the blackberry patch would begin as she darted between the openings.  Her sister, wondering about the commotion, would join us to investigate in typical Siamese cat fashion and then join her sister in the high-spirited hide and seek game.  Both were eventually caught and tossed out of the patch so Mike and I could continue picking the berries.

I'm ready for 2015 and the joy of the blackberry patch with the "girls"; it is a success in raised bed gardening and in using cats for vermin control!