Raspberries

It is a time of abundant harvest here at our home on the hill.  Everyday the children go out to pick buckets of juicy blackberries, tangy in their sour grittiness.  On the weekend we harvested our apple crop a bit early before the bears could get at them.  Our front hall is wall to wall with boxes of crispy sour apples and apple pears, waiting to be cut up for applesauce or dried in my skookum new dehydrator.  Night after night we are delighting in amazing desserts.  Blackberry apple pies and crumbles are the favourites.  Fall is the season of dessert, a treat normally absent from our table.

My very very favourite of all  are the tiny treats that my daughter faithfully presses into my hand in threes and fours each morning.  Raspberries.  Last year we were given three slips of raspberry cane.  We didn't have the time right then to properly line them up with supports and wire as we did in our previous home, so I planted them randomly close up to our front patio.  They have supplied me with morning delights from June right through to now.  There are not many.  They are hidden carefully behind abundant greenery. They are tender and soft with a touch of sweet and a fresh smell of morning.  They do not last gathered in any quantity and  never get beyond my morning yogurt dish.  Raspberries.

Delights in life to be savoured do not have to be abundant.  They are sometimes tender and their taste is subtle.  They often just come bit by bit and are frequently hidden at first glance.  Gifts of attention and slow.  Tender and small.  Enjoy the simple moments pressed gently in your hands.