You set out to finish your digging along the soft-fruit border, around the base of the bushes, to finish a job you began several days ago. You need a trowel and expect to have dirty nails and grubby hands by the end of the job, as gloves don’t allow the right connection with things growing wild!
Unwanted plants entangle the currants and strangle them. Surprise yourself by finding hidden fruits: late black jewels in waiting. Two or three perfect ripe berries together, where they have been missed the first-time round. They are fat, gleaming and juicy. Extra-special bounty berries. Fetch a small white enamel bowl with a blue coloured rim and begin hunting. The berries dangle on thin green stalks, grouped but singleton, not like red or white currants which form in bunches from flower racemes. Work your way around the bush, especially under the leaves, some of which are now curled and crinkled by second generation aphids.
The berries are deceivers: you think you have them all but find more under the branch at the back or low down. Every so often squeeze or squish some leaves, as if by accident, to release an acrid sharp aroma which is an intoxicating reminder memory of home-made cassis and blackcurrant jam on toast. Drop a berry and scrabble in the dry soil as none can be wasted – pop it into your mouth and bite an explosion of taste and smell together. You are distracted and refocussed by things lower down and turn to reach for the forgotten trowel to dig out the weeds you came for.
Stab down into the white snake roots of bind-weed that spread everywhere deep underground; tackle seed-dispersing groundsel and scarlet pimpernel which spreads rosy flowering fingers across the soil surface. As your eyes travel, notice the shallow track of the mole along the edge between path and fruit bed, then the light brown shield-bug scrabbling along and a small white downy feather caught in amongst the newest leaves.
Bonus berries for breakfast!