Their canes are left over from last year, in spring new ones emerge, both catch my clothes when I get close. They leaf out and eventually flower, then the berries start to form: tiny whitish-green at first, then some pink as they grow, eventually turning red, and now maturing into deep luscious purple-black.

Black is beautiful, black is tasty, black is part of the palette of our woods and fields.

What a tired, stale mentality to want everything to be one color, one flavor, one opinion.

[* Black caps are the black raspberries growing wild here. Yet another gift of nature, nurturing us in this vale.]