Late Summer

Late summer is beguiling and wistful. The days are sunny (mostly) and reasonably long but the high summer heat and dust of harvest are over. The landscape has a fabulously wild and unkempt air as parched grasses and weeds grow knee high, seeds scattering in the wind and the stubble fields are roughly tickled, no

making hedgerow gin

Folklore has it that blackberries shouldn’t be picked after Old Michaelmas Day on 10th October because that’s the day that the Devil spits on the blackberries. Apparently, when the Devil fell from Heaven on Michaelmas Day he landed in a thorny bramble thicket and this is his revenge. Whether you believe the story or not,