Yesterday I baked a berry pie because I was thinking about my Mom. It would have been her 102nd birthday, and she always baked us a berry pie to celebrate her birthday, which is probably why I’ve loved berry pies since childhood.

One of the highlights of summer was going berry-picking with Mom, Grandma Loe, and Aunt Loomis. We had a secret spot out in the country on the farm of one of my mom’s friends. Her friend thought it ridiculous to spend any time sweltering in the hot sun, getting bitten by mosquitoes and pricked by briars. We were more than happy to contend with those inconveniences to pick those tart but sweet fruits we loved. When we finished, we always gave her a few quarts of berries to thank her for the opportunity.

The berries were abundant in a section of the woods that her husband had cleared for firewood some years before. Why there were so prolific there I don’t know. Perhaps it was due to the sudden influx of sunlight after the trees were gone, but that’s only my guess. Both raspberry and blackberry bushes were in luxurious abundance in that little clearing. I have always been drawn to the shiny sparkle of raspberries and blackberries. Slowly and tediously thrashing through the thorny underbrush on a hot and steamy July day probably does not sound like fun to many people. But it always was. And whenever I filled another bucket and brought it back to Mom, she always praised me. I liked the praise as much as the berries. Plus, after all the work there were plenty of berries to freeze, turn into jam, and eat by the handful. Best of all, Mom always used a couple of quarts to bake a pie. Sitting in the shade under our old apple tree, eating a pie of raspberry/blackberry pie with a scoop of vanilla ice cream to top it… umm, umm, my mouth waters just thinking of it.

I still pick wild berries in our woods. But now I also have black raspberry and blackberry bushes in my backyard. So I don’t even have to leave my property to pick them. The biggest drawbacks to growing berries are birds. Bird love berries, all kinds of berries. I use netting to help protect my strawberries, but not my berry bushes. Strawberry plants stay put under protective cover, but raspberry and blackberry bushes tend not to cooperate with netting, poking their thorny branches up and out every which way. In the years when berries are abundant, there is usually plenty to share with the birds. Some years the weather doesn’t cooperate, and then I am less forgiving of their thievery. This year was a good year for berries of all types. I froze quarts and quarts of berries.

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Here is the photo of that raspberry/blackberry pie. I can tell you that it was just as good in February as it was last July, both with and without the scoop of ice cream. In fact, if I believed in such a thing as an aphrodisiac, I might put my money on raspberry/blackberry pie. Whether or not it’s an aphrodisiac….