The Colors of Late Summer and Beautiful Weeds

I am so deliriously grateful that it is still summer here in the Northwest, and the sun is still brilliant in the sky. Maybe it's because I know the rain is coming within a month or two that I am absolutely loving this unseasonably warm spell. Yay! It truly is still "late summer."

Colors, sounds and smells of this time of year seem particularly intense and brilliant. It's as if they ripen before the fall approaches. Deep green leaves, golden fields. A perfect rich blue sky. One of my favorite colors in late summer here in Oregon is the sweet, deep purple of blackberries.

I know that Himalayan Blackberries are considered a wildly invasive species, choking out trees and taking over huge amounts of forest land. Googling them yields lots of advice on pesticides and bulldozing.

But on my walks through my little town I am happy to see the nubby green berries turn into lovely, edible clusters. I always try to pick at least one giant bowl of berries at this time of year, and make a cobbler or two. Picking these wild blackberries is slow and hazardous (the thorns are insane), but yields delicious rewards.

From a distance, blackberry bushes are a massive, prickly mound, yet up close there is a lot of fruit waiting to be picked. This year as I approached a big, weedy blackberry bramble not far from my house, I thought of how humanity also seems like this from a distance: big, random, disjointed and prickly. But up close there is so much beauty ... delight that can be too easily overlooked if you don't get up close and personal.

For example, springing up here and there among the berries are the lacy white Queen Anne's lace, another beautiful "weed." I am always blown away by their intricate, snowy blossoms when I get up close. And the little sky-blue flowers that I've known forever as I used to ride my Schwinn Fiesta bike past them down the road. I don't have to know their names to love them.

On this particular morning, I also saw several patted-down areas where deer must have slept the night before. There were also lots of honeybees and spiders, neither of which bother me much.My berry picking was interrupted only by the occasional lumbering of a cement truck down the road (it's an industrial-area road with construction nearby).

It's a less-than-idyllic world—but there is beauty everywhere (even in the weeds and brambles) if you get close enough to really see it!