ko: blackberries and biting flies

Lisa at dVerse challenges us to write about or create a ko (micro-season). Full specifications (which I have not met) are listed below:

 

Major season (sekki, of which there are 24): late summer dog-days

Micro-season (ko, of which there are 72): Blackberries and biting flies

This is the season of hot days when we are ready for coolness, but are unwilling to accept that summer is almost gone. Holidays are over and school begins just as blackberries are ripening and shining invitingly on roadsides.

 

Seasonal vegetables:

Tomatoes are ripe in the garden, squash as swelling into scalloped-edged flying saucers. But these are incidental now – because this is the season when the blackberries ripen. The hard green clusters, eyed in passing for months, are swelling and darkening, and our impatience for them is at last washed away by inky-sweet juices. We gorge ourselves, fingers stained purple and buckets overflowing onto the kitchen table. Tarts and crumbles bake, despite the heat, jams bubble on the stove, filling the house with the musky, dusky scent of these summer-end days.

 

Seasonal activities:

Work and school are resumed, there is no denying that the year has started now as we pack lunches, pat pockets for keys, phone, wallet, ID, before the now-unaccustomed and resented commute. We envy the pig, as she wallows in the dam, mud drying like cement on her sides as she grumbles at the heat and flies. A hundred of these fat black biting flies perch on her, a flock of feeding vampires. When I shoo them away they rise in a buzzing black cloud, only to resettle on her, and on my own bare legs.

 

Haiku:

 

A stinging slap,

a flat black fly falls, leaving

a smear of blood.

The specifications (more information can be found at dVerse):

“The format for each kō is as follows:
•the title of the Major Season or Sekki
•outline why it is called that
•the title of the micro-season or kō
•outline why it is called that
•write a haiku that speaks to the kō
•include insider information on the haiku and include information about the poet (you)
•seasonal fish, information about it, and including ways to prepare it
•seasonal vegetable, information about it, and ways to prepare it
•seasonal activity, often including the holiday or tradition involved, etc.
•a preview of coming attractions for the next kō

In addition, there are images of artwork, drawings, photographs, etc. of the highlighted”