No doubt about it, August is the best month to practice freeganism. Sure, any time of year you can help yourself to the odd morsel of unlucky roadside raccoon (extra points if you bag-and-barbecue the one that clawed its way through our neighbor’s swimming pool). But even better than already-dead varmints are yummy blackberries.

Not even hard-drinking bears who eschew solid food can resist blackberries. The way they burst forth every August with their ravishing aroma…free for the taking for anyone willing to piss off a few spiders—ahhhhhh!

My cheap-ass mother swears things taste better when they’re free, and she might be right about blackberries, if not raccoons.

The berries are calling out to be taken. Today the kids put up with a whole 15 minutes of picking before crying boredom, which gave us (as it happened) half a liquor-store shopping bag of the wondrous little fruits. What shall we do with them, my fellow inebriates?

Citrus Blackberry Collins

We need citrus vodka and blackberry liqueur for this concoction. Odds my parents will do it? 4,143:1 against

Blackberry Crush

Once again, this calls for vodka. Odds? 853:1 against

Blackberry Cocktail

This calls for gin, which we have, although my mum is causing it to disappear. Even if there is any left by the time we get mixing, the recipe’s weirder ingredients (cucumber with mint) may freak my unadventurous parents out. Odds? 548:1 against

Blackberry Caipirinha

A long time ago a liquor representative emailed a tantalizing invitation to taste Cachaca, one of this recipe’s main ingredients. By all means, send it, I said, but alas, it’s not simple to send booze to Canada, and the hooch never materialized. Odds? Sigh.

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Screw it. My mum can make muffins or whatever the hell she wants to throw those blackberries into, and I’ll have a gin & tonic (before she takes it all).