farmdoc's blog post number 49

In my 12 May 2008 blog post I wrote that I no longer have heroes. But if I still had them, one would be Louis Glowinski. Whilst a practising GP in Melbourne’s west, Dr Glowinski, who like me was born in 1947, wrote a book – The Complete Book of Fruit Growing in Australia – which is acclaimed as definitive. On page 142, in his section on raspberries, Dr Glowinski mentions two types: summer bearers and autumn bearers. Last summer our Mole Creek raspberry patch gifted us a kilogram of berries daily. But we have fewer autumn-fruiting canes. And because their fruit was rudimentary a month ago, after which there were frosts and very cold weather, I forgot about them. Then, on the last Tuesday in autumn, as I walked by I glanced at the raspberry patch, and staring back at me was a throng of crimson and bright red raspberries, imploring me to eat them. So I did. I devoured them on the spot. All of them. Yum. In my 28 May 2008 blog post I wrote about the sudden and unwelcome intrusion of an adverse event. My autumn raspberry idyll illustrates how the opposite can occur – and when it does, there are delights to be savoured. Not only that, but the ripening of raspberries in autumn also has a deeper, and metaphorical, meaning for farmdoc as his 61st birthday nears.