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Today, a post from the past, in honor of the season:<\/em><\/p>\n It\u2019s\u00a0Blackberry Time at our house.\u00a0 No, not the electronic device\u2014the real blackberry, as in fruit. For months the berries have been ripening in a patch just north of our house, slowing maturing from flower to fruit. Every few days\u00a0my husband, Bob, descends into the briar patch to laboriously harvest the black jewels hanging amid the leaves. My job is to put up dozens of jars of jam, which fill our kitchen counter, each containing\u00a0the deep, purply-red essence of summer.<\/p>\n Some people (at our house we privately call them Philistines) don\u2019t like our blackberry jam very much, as it has seeds and isn\u2019t as sweet as a commercial jam.\u00a0 Other people remain friends with us, I think, solely to have a steady pipeline of it. Our jam\u2019s fans occasionally accuse us of putting cocaine in the recipe, but that is just a rumor.<\/p>\n I think its secret is that it contains more than just blackberries. When I eat it, I can taste the hard work of Bob and the heat of the sun ripening the fruit on a midsummer day. \u00a0There\u2019s a soup\u00e7on of dog in it as well, from our corgi\u00a0swinging his tail in the blackberry bushes as he runs by. In former\u00a0days it had\u00a0a bit of boy, too, from the hands of our sons who\u00a0stole\u00a0berries from the bowl as it\u00a0sat\u00a0on the kitchen counter waiting to be made into jam. Today I\u2019m the one who steals the fruit, popping them one by one into my mouth as I pass by, unable to resist the impulse.<\/p>\n Making blackberry jam is a ritual of our Iowa summers, as essential to\u00a0our year\u00a0as Christmas or Thanksgiving. Perhaps it\u2019s a throwback to some ancestral desire to stock up the summer\u2019s abundance in preparation for the winter, a need to fill\u00a0the granaries for the inevitable lean times.<\/p>\n One can get quite philosophical as one stirs the pectin on the stove, waiting for it to boil.<\/p>\n Most of all, I think this blackberry jam contains a reminder of the abundance and sweetness of God\u2019s creation. Maybe we need that reminder this summer more than usual, during this year of terrorism, violence, and loss.<\/p>\n The patch near our home grew from a few wild berry bushes transplanted long ago by a former owner of our house. Each year it grows larger, colonizing new parts of the lawn as it sends out new canes. With no fertilizer, no watering and no fussing, by late July the branches are heavy with ripening fruit that feeds the neighborhood birds and children as well as our family and friends.<\/p>\n Some of the berries are too tart, frankly, even for a blackberry lover like myself. But every tenth berry or so is so exquisitely sweet, so dense with flavor, that one bite is the equivalent of standing in front of the Mona Lisa. When one experiences such a masterpiece, one can only marvel.<\/p>\n I sometimes wonder why my husband and I labor so over that blackberry jam, why we don\u2019t just enjoy the fresh berries and let the rest go to seed or to feed the birds. We wouldn\u2019t need to put them up into jam, for our supermarket, of course, stocks a range of varieties both familiar and exotic.<\/p>\n Part of it, I think, is that in making jam we become co-creators with the divine. If God went to the trouble to create such an abundance of fruit, surely we have an obligation to participate in the creative project. To do anything less would be disrespectful to the giver.<\/p>\n By the end of the season we will have more than fifty jars of this elixir, enough to give loved ones and slather it liberally on pancakes and toast for months. Like manna from heaven, there always seems to be just enough to last until the next year\u2019s harvest, proof positive of the goodness of a benevolent creator.<\/p>\n Stay in touch! Like Holy Rover on Facebook:<\/em><\/p>\n![\"IMG_4091\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/628\/2016\/07\/IMG_4091-1024x768.jpg\")
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