Garden strawberries and blackberries

This photo shows scrumptious blackberries from our huge wild blackberry patch, and Chandler strawberries from our twelve sturdy plants.
My husband took this photo of the bowl of blackberries and strawberries I picked this morning.
We don't water or feed the seven foot tall and ten foot wide blackberry brambles, and can only pick from the edges of it, due to extreme danger from the thorns. Smile.
This leaves most of the berries for the birds and wild critters that visit our city garden. We have a pretty skunk and a light grey possum among our visitors, and they may actually live in the thorny berry patch, which is fine by us.
So these berries are all organic and sweet as sweet can be.

Blackberries and Bumble Bee

Bumble Bee
Originally uploaded by sarahkim

The blackberry thicket in our backyard is covered with white flowers, and humming with life, as bees and butterflies visit the flowers, doing their work of food gathering and pollinating.

I use the word “Thicket” because it is a true bramble patch, six feet tall and about twelve feet square. These are volunteer brambles with such juicy, sweet berries that we keep the patch there.

It requires no watering or feeding or spraying so is a sanctuary for our wild visitors. The center of the berry patch is so thick, and protected so well by savage thorns, that we know birds and small furry critters safely make their homes there.

The only work I do with the berries, beyond picking them which is fun, is when I don heavy leather work gloves and long handled pruning shears, and snip off invasive canes that are crowding our Nix Creeper rose, our fence or our sweet peas.

All in all, the blackberries are a welcome boon in the hot days of summer.