COSA NOSTRA

I have had my dealings with blackthorn before. It is the plant equivalent of the mafia. Unforgiving, to say the least. I wrote about that on 13.03.2013.

I thought that maybe I had left it too late this year, but today I finally got round to picking the sloes. It turns out they are all the better for leaving. The blue, slightly powdery blush is upon them, and they are big and fat. They are soft, too, and that is  a great advantage in making sloe gin, as, instead of having to prick each individual fruit, you can squidge them between finger and thumb. Not without effort, but far less time consuming. You have to do this, or the fragrant juicy flesh will be unavailable to flavour the gin.

So later turned out to be better.

But there was something else. I don't know if it was my imagination but it was as though the sloes wanted to be picked. I used neither gloves nor goggles. And how many injuries did I pick up from the potentially lethal thorns? None. Could it be that, at the very right moment that the fruit needs to be picked, and thus the seed spread, the blackthorn lets its guard down? Its thorns soften and yield?

Perhaps it is fanciful. Perhaps, even, it is a trap.

But the mafia in the hedgerows let me pass unmolested.

And the illegal hooch trade is on.