Late July is when the sweet fruits of common elderberry bushes start to ripen along roadsides, ditches and other sunny, moist sites across Georgia. Between now and mid-September, many folks will gather bucket loads of the wild, purplish-black berries to make jellies, pies and perhaps some homemade wine.
I don’t know how many people, if any, still make their own elderberry wine (commercial varieties are available), but I remember it as a source of some of my parents’ rare disputes when I was growing up on Johns Island, S.C.
My daddy loved a glass of homemade elderberry wine in the evening. He said it relaxed him and helped him sleep better, and it was good for his heart.
My mother, however, being a strict Baptist, looked askance at elderberry wine. That did not deter my daddy, though, from his nightly sips as long as his supply lasted.
He did not make his own elderberry wine. Instead, he had an “arrangement”: In return for letting local folks harvest elderberries from the bushes growing in dense clusters on our farm, he received a small share of the wine they made from the berries.
The folks said that the elderberries on our land for some reason (some said it was the fertile soil) produced some of the best berries for making wine.
The folks always faithfully delivered a share of their wine (in bottles or Mason jars) to my daddy. His supply was never large, only enough to last a couple of months.
When his supply ran out, there was no more homemade wine until the next elderberry harvest, which gladdened my mother. In later years, I think she looked more favorably on elderberry wine, perhaps because the preacher admitted that he himself occasionally sipped a wee bit to settle his stomach.
Clarification: Last week, we said that the “handle” of the Big Dipper points to the North Star. Actually, the two outer stars of the Big Dipper’s bowl point to the North Star.
In the sky: The moon, now in last quarter, will "shrink" into a thin crescent and be new next Saturday, said David Dundee, Tellus Science Museum astronomer. Mercury is low in the east just before sunrise and will appear near the moon Friday morning. Venus rises out of the east about an hour before sunrise and will appear near the moon Thursday morning. Mars is in the west at sunset. Saturn is in the west just after dark and sets in the west around midnight. Jupiter is not easily seen this month.
