Something happens to me when the blackberries start ripening. I don’t know if its some primitive impulse to stock up for the lean winter months, but suddenly, I NEED to forage. My local wasteland is a huge area of landfill under the Heathrow flightpath, but it’s covered in wild flowers- vetch and mullein and teasel. And the fattest, juiciest blackberries anywhere around. The taste of blackberries varies massively, but these are slightly woody and sweet-sour, poignant with approaching autumn.

With my bags and plastic pots lined up I go into a kind of trance. I pick and pick and pick, and then when I think I’ve finished I spot a few more weighing down a bramble trellis and I can’t help myself. The dog gets bored but I can’t go home until I’ve filled up every receptacle. Next day, I go back and pick some more, until my freezer is full and I finally have to stop. And then, as other fruits come into season, I start making hedgerow jelly, adding elderberrries, hawthorn, sloes and wild plums, rose hips and even a few rowan berries to my blackberries. It’s a recipe my mum used to make annually. Some of my favourite memories of childhood involve picking with her in the Devon lanes where I grew up.

I love the conversations that happen when you’re out blackberry picking. When you’re picking, you have a purpose, and that focus puts you right in the here and now. I’m not a pagan, but it feels important to me to honour changing of the seasons, to notice nature, and give thanks. The four seasons are such an important part of our way of life in Britain- I didn’t realise how much until I lived in countries that don’t have them. Noticing them is not only about the annual changes, it is also a reminder of seasons past- the longer passage of time. Where I once picked with my mother, I now pick with my teenagers.

Peering into the tangled hedges, taking care not to get stung by nettles or scratched by brambles takes focus, but conversation flows when you are not face to face but side to side. It’s a small glimpse of how life must have been for communities of women throughout history, something we’ve mostly forgotten in our country. Filling bags with free fruit, gifted by nature, with the promise of a winter warmed by crumble, is satisfying. But there is also the urgency of the knowledge that there is only a short window of opportunity before the rain comes, or the blow flies, or some farmer who decides to cut the hedges back. The Japanese call this awareness of the fleeting beauty and bounty of nature wabi-sabi. Seamus Heany famously wrote about the blackberries he hoarded (“sweet Like thickened wine), lamenting “Each year I hoped they’d keep, knew they would not.” That poem echoes in my head every year.

Thank goodness for fridge-freezers and the huge copper jam pan I inherited from my husband’s Scottish Granny. For the next few weeks, I will obsessively pick, embracing my inner cave-woman. And throughout the year, I will gift friends and family with pots of deep purple glowing jelly, and look forward to the next blackberry season.

Hedgerow jelly:

In a large pan, add blackberries, rosehips, sloes, elderberries, wild plums, and a few hawthorn and rowan berries. These can be collected and frozen as they ripen at slightly different times. For every 2.5 kg of fruit, then add approx. 2 litres of water.

Boil until soft and mushy (when cool mash with a potato masher to really break up the fruit). Using a jelly bag suspended from a hook (or an old pillow case if you don’t require totally transparent jelly), let the mixture drip into a bucket overnight. Heat the resulting juice with sugar (450g sugar for every 570 ml juice) until the sugar has dissolved. Then raise the heat and boil hard. Stir to prevent sticking. Test for set using a blob dripped onto a saucer that has been cooled in the fridge. When the surface wrinkles, it’s ready. Turn off the heat and leave for 15 minutes before ladling into clean, warm, dry jars. Store in a cool, dark place. Eat on toast, as a warming drink (just add boiling water) or even with cold meat and cheese.

In my new novel, The Whispering Trees, teenage Liv loves learning about country traditions from elderly Annie. But her friend is being hounded by nasty local bullies, the natural world is in trouble, and a mysterious voice on the hill has an urgent message for her that only she can interpret.

The Whispering Trees is available from independent bookshops, Waterstones and direct from Blue Poppy Publishing.