Elderberry Season

As the title of this blog suggests, I have always been fond of elderflower. Growing up we used to have a whole load of it in our garden and nearby in the wilderness so typically during the summer we would harvest a lot of it and make elderflower cordial. These days the cordial is a bit too sweet for my tastes but I still love the smell and taste of elderflower so as summer was coming around I was excited to finally harvest some for myself.

I am sure most of my readers are aware that we in Britain have had an unusually hot summer this year. These long hot periods, much earlier than we usually get them, have caused a lot of our forageables to ripen much earlier than expected. After many busy weeks of chores, outings, and trips I had been too tired to go out and properly survey the elderflower bushes nearby for a decent while. I had thought to myself "no worries, elderflower should still only barely be in season," and had put it on hold over some much needed rest. It was to my dismay that I later went out and found all the elderflower bushes nearby dead or smelling of cat piss. Whilst quite saddened by my discovery, I nevertheless decided I would simply wait and harvest the elderberries instead which would be new to me.

Whilst sitting down and typing this up I have successfully acquired some elderberries and blackberries and they currently sit macerating in my fridge. The plan is to turn them into a jam, which I am hoping will taste at least somewhat good. During this process of surveying the elderberries and making sure I checked frequently enough to see if they were ripe enough to harvest, I found myself considering how my perception of time has shifted.

After graduating from university and starting a job, the way I experience time has shifted from calendar-based to day-based. In university the structure of a day was very flexible. I frequently found myself getting up and going to bed at whatever time I felt like doing so, and what I did on an hourly basis was mostly dictated by how much work I had and how much I felt like doing it. On a larger scale, however, things were dictated by calendar deadlines. Weeks of non-stop work followed by weeks of holiday, and then a couple weeks of relatively little work as new modules began. I was aware of what month and day it was because it mattered for exam and coursework deadlines.

Comparatively, working feels much like the opposite to me. Each day has remarkably little variation in it, after all I need to be in the same place at the same time 5 days a week. I wake up and go to bed at the same time each day, keep to mostly the same schedule, and mix in a little variation at the weekend. No longer are the things I have to do constrained by a given date, instead I do the same thing every day of the year more or less. To my schedule, the seasons passing are little more than a reason to open a window or doff a jacket. It wasn't until I began to watch out for forageables that I needed to pay attention to something timely again, paying attention to how things changed or how the weather would affect their growth. Long periods of heatwaves make it inadvisable to go for a walk and check, so I must plan around the weather and keep an eye on the world around me.

At first thought the whole notion seemed a bit daunting, having to remain ever vigilant and take frequent trips to surveil the surroundings. But I reckon this interest in the changing of the seasons is a healthy one for me to try and cultivate. Monotony is a lubricant that helps our time slip away from us, after all, and the variation of the natural world is both a great way to combat that as well as a good excuse to keep myself healthy and wandering. The summer has lasted too long and I now wish to don my outerwear again so I'll hopefully notice as the season turns to autumn and I find a good way to get my hands on some pumpkin with which to make tart. Until then, I suppose I'll watch the remaining elderberries pass their prime as I dig into some good jam.