I washed dyes extracted from the juice of blackberries onto paper boards. The brighter hue is made from pure blackberry and is very fugitive. In a few moths it will fade to a pale washed out blue. The darker colour was created with the addition of lye, which according to the seventeenth century botanist Culpepper made a permanent black for colouring the hair. I enjoy the reciprocity between their relative warmth and degree of transience.
Production will begin shortly of a limited edition of six bottles of Vin de Mûres, made from specially selected blackberries ripened on west facing bushes along The Gateway to the Egg. The fruits have been hand picked and the fermentation process is imminent for this new wine, from La Maison d’Oeuf.
Seamus Heaney’s poem called Blackberry Picking was sent to me just a couple of days ago in response to my ongoing fascination with this bountiful plant, but without mention of his death at the end of August (news of which just penetrated my thin cedar walls). I walked out tonight as the sun set along my abundant avenue of fruit laden bushes, whose every stem seemed home to the green, to the ripe and to the gone to seed. Nothing’s lasts forever, except perhaps its memory.
Striped arial raiders have dug out a former mouse hole as a home and I am keeping my distance as they come and go. The wasp’s sting evolved from an ovipositor and so only the females will send you off in need of vinegar, but then one is not likely ever to meet the male.
Most of yesterday was spent making a new work table that folds down to form a door to the underbed storage. It is made or birch ply and supported on two hinged legs of 2×1 softwood that are located on the floor with velcro strips. It is really uplifting to have a space to spread out paper, photographs and thoughts… a proper station for serious work. The next practical task will involve book shelves.
Marshmallow rises up through the tall grass within twenty metres of the Egg (N 50˚47.142′ W 001˚24.449′). The French began to use pith from the stems of this plant, boiled with sugar, as a chewy sweet in the 19th century. They later tried whipping the pulped roots with egg white and rose water to create the light airy confection that todays purely sugar and gelatine marshmallows are derived from. The plant may be scarce in this environment and need to be left untouched, but if more are found nearby I will make my own confection as an after dinner treat – and as a further reminder of our long cultural relationship with all that is living around us.
Morning ripened berries were selected from an east facing bush on the Egg Gateway. They were thoroughly washed and examined by hand for bits of thorn and other unwelcomeness. They were then lightly crushed in a bowl.
A sachet of pectin with a quarter cup of sugar was added to the berries and brought to the boil for a minute. Seven full cups of sugar were then added and boiled again for a short time, until the nascent jam began to set on a cooled spoon. Froth was skimmed from the top and the mixture carefully poured into two pre-prepared sterilised jars.
nb. It is important not to pick blackberries after Michaelmas on September 29th after which time they increasingly become a home to maggoty creatures. It has been argued that the devil renews a curse on the plant on this day every year, after landing on it when ejected from heaven by archangel Michael.
Media
Eight cups of berries (crushed to fill six cups)
Seven and 1/4 cups of sugar
One sachet of pectin
Two clean glass jars
Two labels (to be applied)
Found close to the egg where I store spares for the dinghy, were two dead wood mice. I was surprised to find two so close together and wonder how they came to die. There were no obvious signs of injury and nothing poisonous amongst my supplies. I have placed them into separate containers drilled with small holes so they can decompose and hope to inherit two complete skeletons which I will try to assemble one cold Winter’s evening, like those Airfix kits of childhood.
A fluorescing tube in the ultra violet spectrum was employed to turn the egg into a huge moth attracting device last night. White cotton gauze stretched across the doorway was intended as the stage for a flickering theatre of moths in flight and a platform on which they could land for solo performances in both silhouette and spotlight.
The grey or dark dagger below (it is only possible to tell them apart by an examination of genitalia) was a memorable participant. In the caterpillar state they love blackthorn, so the nearby thicket is perhaps its own home and the axis of it’s nocturnal world.
The Exbury Egg 