Let's go blackberrying

Autumn is beginning to stretch its limbs and wake up. Fresher mornings, lower mists, mellow light. If September was a vegetable it'd be a butternut squash - sweet, but in a more grown up way than raspberries and white chocolate. A delicately rich, homely, earthy smell. Like when you roast squash and it turns that deep caramel colour and tastes better than anything else could on a damp October night. Autumn is my favourite season. 

Traces of summer still linger on in September though. Last weekend it was really warm in London - 28 degrees - but the heat didn't last all evening like it does in June. Late Sunday afternoon we went blackberrying, just as the weather felt like it was beginning to turn from hot summer to early autumn . Considering I live in built up suburbia with just the odd lonely field crammed between streets, there are so many blackberries to be picked; on the roadside, down lanes, tucked along driveways. We came home with purple stained fingers (and mouths) and tupperwares full of ripe blackberries ready to be turned into bramble jelly and blackberry and apple crumble. Another reason to love autumn.

The colours of these sloe bushes were lovely too.