Bramble

Bronzing bracken and mottled bramble gleamed in the light of the sinking sun.

Then the merry little boys they will ramble, / So gleesome, o’er mountain and dale, / Where the sweets of the rose through the bramble / Will be blown by the mild summer gale: / Then a share of Nature’s smiles each morning / To the poor humble peasant will be given. / While the lark from his covert he is soaring, / His musical notes to the heaven.

The discovery of long-forgotten gravestones in a thicket of bramble and alder set one author on the trail of a singular Native American woman and oyster farmer who lived in 19th century Washington state.

Bramble Rose is an excellent first album from a singer and songwriter that experts are pegging to become a big star. It's proof she is a literate songwriter and vocalist; a newcomer who's here to stay.

Oleg's German Shepherd was barking at a bramble bush.

He hid behind a bramble bush.

The hovel stood in the centre of what had once been a vegetable garden, but was now a patch of rank weeds. Surrounding this, almost like a zareba, was an irregular ring of gorse and brambles, an unclaimed vestige of the original common.

At the same time, the encroachment of vegetation proceeds apace, and broom and brambles have already made portions of the line impassable, even on foot.

Jeanette is making bramble jelly. She is trying to listen to the Morning Story on Radio 4 while she goes about her task. Jeanette's brow is furrowed as she weighs the deep purple fruit and tips the berries into the heavy jelly pan […]

A similar instinct for self-preservation was the cause of my first lie. My governess left me alone for half an hour with strict instructions to eat no blackberries during her absence. When she returned I was suspiciously near the brambles. ‘You have been eating blackberries’, she said. ‘I have not’, I replied. ‘Put out your tongue!’ she said. Shame overwhelmed me, and I felt utterly wicked.