For the past couple of weeks I’ve been alert to any spot of orange in our local hedgerows: signs of flowering barberry bushes. The fruits, later on in the summer, are so inconspicuous that you have to know where they are before you spot them. So all the new locations have been firmly planted in my food memory.
But then, oh boy, yesterday I hit the absolute jackpot! Quite close to home, by a road I’ve cycled on thousands of times I’m embarrassed to say, sits this massive mountain of a bush, glaringly orange like a beacon:
It may not look so big in the photo, but it’s about 5×5 metres wide and 2 metres tall.
“What’s the fuss about barberries?”, I hear you ask. Well, dear reader, the tiny berries that are the result of successful pollination can be turned into a wine second to none. Last year I called it “Black Bar” and it proved to be a very heady concoction.
They will be ready to pick in August. Now it just so happens that we have a couple of Dutch fruit pickers coming to visit us, so they will be put to good use 😁. Watch this space!
Finally, a close-up of a water droplet in a larch rosette:
The healthy forager 