Autumn seems to have arrived earlier than normal this year and the hedgerows are bursting with smells, flavours and food.
Out and about over this weekend and the human foragers are hard at work gathering in the hedgerow harvest.
Not a thicket of brambles or a tree laden with apples could be passed without someone, bucket or bag in hand, picking fruit.
Apple trees are heavily laden with their green and red globes with very few windblown beneath.
Glistening in the late morning dew Dad said they tasted sharp but bursting full of flavour.
Nearby succulent brambles, ripe for the picking, dotted the hedgerows. Crumbles, pies or a fruity wine the reward for those humans brave enough to challenge the thorny branches in their quest.
Paths could be seen trodden into many thickets of undergrowth in the search for these small berries.
Full of vitamin C, but sadly not good for us dogs, brambles only last a few weeks on the bushes and are quite sought after by those humans who know where to get the best, largest fruits.
Brambles or Blackberries?
No article about brambles would be complete with the discussion about their name. Both my humans think they are called brambles. However, friends from the south of England call them blackberries.
Further research complicates this further with the fruit in some places being called blackberries with the bush they grow on called a bramble bush.
Maybe you know what is correct? Let me know in the comments area below.
Whatever they are called they were not the only dark purple coloured fruit I spotted on my walk.
Elderberries
Well above my head height, elderberries were also to be found. This fruit grows in big fans about the size of my dads outstretched hand.
Last year mum gathered many, many bags of this fruit and created something the humans call wine. During last winter the kitchen smelled and sounded a bit strange as three large plastic barrels gurgled and fizzed.
Mum tried to explain that happy bacteria called yeast were transforming the berries into wine and the process would take a few months. One of the by products of fermentation, I think this is what she called it, was a gas called carbon dioxide. It was this that was making the bubbles.
Until next time
Licks and wags
Charlie