August Almanac

Are there ticks in Ireland? If so, Seamus Heaney doesn't mention them in his poem about foraging for wild blackberries. Here in Maine there are banner crops of both this summer. I walk along the disused gravel road just around the corner and pick the fruit that has "inked up," careful to avoid the thorns and not to wander too far into the brush lest I bring home unwanted hitchhikers concealed in my clothes. But the "rat-grey fungus" that spoiled Heaney's harvest isn't a problem for me, because every berry I can reach goes straight into my mouth.

The spring peeper above that I spotted nestling on a blackberry leaf is likewise a far cry from the "great slime kings" of another Heaney poem, "Death of a Naturalist." Below, a dapper grasshopper and a green darner dragonfly from the same stretch of road, both invertebrates substantially larger than the tiny frog.