Wednesday, June 17, 2020

Blackberry Hunting In The Wichita Falls Lucy Park Jungle


With a cooling breeze blowing on an outer world barely heated to 90 degrees, I thought I could have myself a mighty fine commune with nature today via a walk around the undeveloped backwoods lush green jungle part of Lucy Park.

I thought correctly. The combo of a semi-strong wind and a lot of shade, with cooling green on the ground, made for a pleasant, not HOT, walk.

It seems like an ancient long ago time when my number one fear of living in Texas was the fact that I've never been a fan of hot weather.

I never was a fan of a heat wave when I lived in Western Washington. At that location temperatures in the high 70s is a heat wave. When it gets into the 80s in the Puget Sound zone one begins to suffer. And those rare times the heat would go into the 90s, well, that was just not tolerable.

Ironically, living in Western Washington, where it seldom gets HOT, one of the fun things to do, in summer, is to drive over the mountains, as in Cascade mountains, via one of the mountain passes, to Eastern Washington, to a climate more like Texas, albeit with a lot more hills, big rivers, orchards, Indian reservations and tourist towns.

Walking in the Lucy Park jungle today, with its lush vegetation, I was wondering why blackberries do not grow here, in the wild, naturally. Blackberries are grown commercially here, in locations such as the Young's Farm Orchards a few miles northeast of my location, in the small town known as Charlie, a short distance from the even smaller town known as Dean.

I have been to both Charlie and Dean, but saw no blackberries at that point in time. Because it was the middle of winter.

The Young's operation also has strawberry fields. With a you pick option. I do not know if one can pick the blackberries in you pick mode.

Maybe if I did more off trail exploring in the Lucy Park jungle I might find some blackberry vines with fruit ready to pick. I doubt it though...

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