almost berries again

Just about dusk yesterday, I went down to check on the approaches to the blackberry patch that Tommy was mowing yesterday morning. He had said he thought they would be another week or two ripening, that there were plenty of berries, still mostly red.

Well, they are mostly red still, but there are definitely ripe black ones to be found, mostly on the tips of the twigs. I had planned to check on them, and then continue on my way on the loop, just over half a mile, through the old white gate.

Instead I spent ten minutes gathering a half cup of berries, and came trudging up the hill again, barely a quarter mile.

Not much exercise, but breakfast sure was good.

Tommy has made a nice broad approach path, and mowed in close to the bearing canes.

In my fridge last night.

Breakfast - with blueberries, peaches, milk and cream. Yum!

almost blackberry-time...

We are having an incredibly pleasant first week of July, with days in the upper 80s and nights in the 60s. However, it has started to  warm up again. Back to normal by next week.


Yesterday Tommy mowed around

the clumps of berries that have arisen in the field south of the tank. Since he mowed into the clumps till he got to where there were thick berries, the surrounding ground is pretty rough. Most people will find it pretty convenient picking though, even if the third-mile round trip and a few minutes picking took ME 53 minutes.

 There are lots of green and pink berries, and a few ripe ones. I found one spot where there were several branches more advanced than the rest. I got about two dozen, just about an ounce. YUMMMMM...

mystery tree (solved)

Last May, when I was taking pictures of the wonderful vine(s) of dewberries I found under the oak halfway to the gate, I discovered a little tree that I didn’t recognize, next to and among the dewberries, with small white flowers in clusters. Of course I tried to make it out to be a persimmon tree, but it wouldn’t go there. Then I more or less forgot about it.

Last Sunday (January2), as I set off for a walk, I thought of it, and went to see what sort of fruit it had made, if any remained on the branches. There were a few last hangers-on of black berries. I photographed the twigs and berries, and tried to key the tree out in the Key to Families in the Flora of North Central Texas. No luck. In frustration I wrote to Becky Bender and Mike Mizell.

Becky replied that it was probably a Carolina Buckthorn, Frangula caroliniana . Sure enough, it fits that description to a T, as well as matching the photos produced by Google image. So there is a nice new species for the Ridge. But I STILL can’t get it to the Rhamnaceae in the family key!

persimmon trees and briar patches

I was questioned about how I could walk into a briar patch dense enough to hide a persimmon tree. The answer is, it depends on the briars, and the way in which the tree is hidden. In the north pasture at the Ridge there has always been a central patch of woods, referred to by Isabel as the persimmon grove. I have known for some time of a group of persimmon trees on the east (upper) side of the trees, though in the main, the grove is hackberry, ash, oak, plum, etc. But these known 'simmon trees are all male, and thus non-bearing.




In the last three decades or so, the pasture was invaded by blackberries, to where the western half got to be almost solid with them. In the nineties, Nolan fought his little old tractor through and made a path near the west fence, which I kept open for several seasons, but of late it became solid briarpatch again. Between the central grove and the west fence, scattered among the brambles, are a good many smallish trees that like damper conditions, as this is where the drainage runs. Besides the other species mentioned, there are willow, cottonwood, pecan -- none very large except for the huge pecan in the northwest corner, Pines from the Holmans’ property are moving in at the southwest corner.

In the spring of 2009, Eddie and Stephen performed herculean labors and mowed down almost all of the blackberries on the west side, leaving a crunchy, spiky “mulch” some inches thick of chopped up half-inch canes. That was a very dry year, and there was very little regrowth except in the southwest corner, nearest the tank. This spring, they fairly easily re-mowed it, except in that same corner, where standing water (it was a VERY wet spring) defeated them.


I would never have tried to walk into the remnants of the original head-high thicket! I’m not sure even rabbits can fit into that. But the regrowth area looks deceptively possible to move through. NOT. Sunday afternoon I mowed a section by the female persimmon tree, and the contrast between the mowed part and the remainder makes it more clear how much of a thicket it really is.





Besides the scrawny little persimmon tree in the center of this picture, I also found a few more, based on the bark appearance. One of them appeared to have a single little round fruit hanging on a branch, way up where I couldn’t really see for sure what it was. It was a tree about twice the size of the one that I’m certain of.

So. Persimmons of both sexes now definitely go on the species list. Also Bidens frondosa, seeds of which I picked up LIBERAL-
LY in my socks.

berries in the rain

What a welcome break in the weather! All week it has been relatively cool, if a bit muggy, and it looks to continue for a few more days. The rain Friday evening and Saturday morning at the Ridge was another two and a quarter inches, as a gentle drizzle for hours in the evening and early morning.

Mary and her friend Rebecca and I got started berrying around 8:30, an hour later than our original expecting-heat plan. Mary had to go in a bit after ten after running to fire ants that stung her numerous times, but she was feeling OK in the evening. Rebecca and I put in another half hour or more. I froze three small ziploc bags of berries and kept a bowlful in the fridge. (This picture is from July 2007, but the same cycles come around every year - I ate both berries and lambs-quarter this week.)


I told Rebecca about the violent thunderstorms, sometimes with hail, that we had had at past berrypicking/ice cream parties (Cassie's pockets full of hailstones). She is from Florida, where apparently hail is uncommon. Then after a partly sunny afternoon that got up to the high eighties, and felt hotter in the full sun while I was watching the bees, it suddenly got very dark and commenced a sockdologer of a right and proper 4th-of-July-berrypicking thunderstorm! Extremely heavy rain and lashing wind for a half hour, drizzle for a half hour, then the sun came out again. Another inch and a quarter, for a total on the week of nearly six inches!

Since the rain Tuesday morning, some flowers have picked up. I don't know about nectar, but at least the bees are bringing in pollen again. I took numerous photos of the entrance, and caught one pollen-laden worker as she disappeared into the shadow of the interior. Photoshop made her visible.