More fruit than fast

Eastside Road, August 3, 2011—

IT ISN'T EASY to follow the fast we'd chosen, not in the summertime. Not because we're hungry all the time: hot weather has a way of lessening appetite, even if you're working out a bit. But because there's all this delicious fruit to be eaten. Peaches, melons, blackberries…

We're blessed or cursed, depending on how you look at it, with all these blackberry bushes. When I was a kid the whole family used to go out berrying once a week in season; I remember picking berries into a three-gallon milk bucket. Of course you didn't pick it completely full, but still: two gallons times four pickers, that's a lot of berries. Pie, jam, and canned berries for the winter.

Here I'm content to pick a pint or so at a time, and even then we don't always keep up. I last picked on Sunday; here it is Wednesday. The berries we had tonight had been in the refrigerator all this time, yet they were just beginning to ferment — you could definitely taste the alcohol. That's another thing we set aside on these fast days, alcohol: but when you eat fresh fruit, you take your chances…