
{"id":498,"date":"2007-06-28T07:49:44","date_gmt":"2007-06-28T15:49:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/2007\/06\/28\/if-you-don%e2%80%99t-bleed-you-haven%e2%80%99t-been-picking-blackberries\/"},"modified":"2007-06-28T07:49:44","modified_gmt":"2007-06-28T15:49:44","slug":"if-you-don%e2%80%99t-bleed-you-haven%e2%80%99t-been-picking-blackberries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/2007\/06\/28\/if-you-don%e2%80%99t-bleed-you-haven%e2%80%99t-been-picking-blackberries\/","title":{"rendered":"If you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t bleed, you haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t been picking blackberries"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em>By Rebekah L. Cowell\u00c2\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I know I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m a Carolina gal when I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve braved mosquitoes, spiders, snakes and large spiky thorns to reach the much-coveted gems \u00e2\u20ac\u201c blackberries. The brilliance of an onyx stone winks at me from behind green leaves, its beacon message, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153pick-me,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d belying the nest of thorns that awaits my fingers as I probe around looking for the big ones, the ripe ones.<\/p>\n<p>I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not a brave woman. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m scared of spiders, and snakes make me shriek and run.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>But blackberries have bewitched me to such an extent that I will face snakes and spiders just to get a bowl full of those twinkling orbs of summer goodness. Wild blackberries are normally ripe by mid-June here in the Triangle region. I was worried, with the drought we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve had, that the blackberries would dry up on the vine, blood red, never ripening into their deep darkness.<\/p>\n<p>My worries have been allayed. This morning I found a glorious unmolested grove of blackberries along a pond. My daughter sits in her stroller and watches me scratch my legs and arms and proudly proclaims, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Blackberries!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d She\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s only 9 months old, and perhaps in a year or two she will get involved with my North Carolina summertime rite of passage. For now, she watches, and laughs at my exclamations of pain.<\/p>\n<p>The pond is full of frogs, and they call to each other. Male frogs looking for a mate, and female frogs saying, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Come here, big boy!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d A cicada sounds out just as I decide I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t fit another blackberry in my bowl \u00e2\u20ac\u201c his call drags me down a sludge of memories, memories of growing up in the Deep South, nights without air-conditioning, when you could barely breathe because of the heat and the cicadas called so loudly outside the window that sleep seemed impossible.<\/p>\n<p>This is quintessential summer for me, the heat of a 90 degree June day, fingers stained an inky deep purple, a bowl of blackberries, itchy scratches on my arms and legs, and one good scratch produces a long trail of blood that passes my knee and meanders down to my ankle \u00e2\u20ac\u201c minor scars in the quest of reliving memories of why summer has always had a magic all its own for me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Rebekah L. Cowell\u00c2\u00a0 I know I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m a Carolina gal when I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve braved mosquitoes, spiders, snakes and large spiky thorns to reach the much-coveted gems \u00e2\u20ac\u201c blackberries. The brilliance of an onyx stone winks at me from behind green leaves, its beacon message, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153pick-me,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d belying the nest of thorns that awaits my fingers as I&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=498"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}