Wineberries

Colleen over at Loose Leaf Notes mentioned wineberries in today's entry.

I was immediately transported back to childhood.

Wineberries were the stuff of youth. My brother and I roamed the farm in search of those sweet yet tart berries.

They are some kind of wild raspberry, I suppose, but oh! so much better. Tangy and sweet and delicious. The berries are red and juicy and they draw your eye and then your hand and before you know it, that berry is in your mouth and you're drooling for the next one.

They grew wild down along a ravine near the lot where my parents kept horses. We weren't supposed to go there without an adult, because the horses, though tame, were quiet large compared to two small children.

Heedless of danger, we slipped through the fence and over to the berries. We carried a small dish, ostensibly to take some back home, but inevitably we ate twice as many as we took to my mother.

The berries peeled off the vine, leaving a yellow something behind. They were sticky and we never found enough of them for a pie or anything like that. They were definitely berries just for eating.

My mother did not know where we found the berries we brought back until one day we were out riding, my brother and I on a pony. He pointed to the ravine. "That's were we found the berries," he said.

Being the eldest, it was my responsibility to keep said brother out of trouble. Failing this, even though we were uninjured, I received a beating when we finished our ride.

The beating was for disobeying, I was told, and leading my brother astray.

Okay, so that memory turned a little rancid in the retelling... still, the berries were good. When I find them now, which is seldom, they never taste quite as sweet as they did then, when I was still young and innocent and a child of the 1970s.