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Come fall in Vancouver, binners who hunt, and gather bottles, and cans in the back alleys and side streets are also in the right places to find the ripening fruit, hanging off countless trees, and bushes, free for the picking.

The efforts of Vancouver's urban gardeners finally begin to bear fruit in late August -- I can get away with writing that because tomatoes are a sort of closeted fruit that passes for a vegetable. Most of the obvious fruit -- apples, and berries -- are essentially feral, and grow, and ripen in Vancouver's impossibly fertile climate without any human assistance.

Blackberries, in particular, thrive all over Vancouver, in spite of wholesale culling efforts. Everyone loves the blackberries themselves but it takes tough love to keep the bushes, with their long, thorny, tendril branches, from spreading like wildfire. So what looks like an attempt to wipe out the entire blackberry plant species is merely light pruning. This time of year, blackberry bushes become a neighbourhood hangout,

[caption id="attachment_4610" align="alignnone" width="497"] The ripe berries vanished just after I snapped this photo. Yum![/caption]

Apple trees are also common in every neighbourhood I've been in. Lots of these apples will get picked, but it's my impression that most ripen, fall, and rot where they lay. When I'm sitting in the McDonalds at Broadway and Granville, I am less than one block away from apricot trees -- two varieties -- both delicious. Click on the images to enlarge them.

Vancouver's blackberries -- an invasive species ►

At one P.M. on December 24, 2012, I was on the West side of Oak Street in the alley between 15th and 16th Avenue. The weather, by the way, was  nice and sunny. Looking East into the lane on the other side of Oak. I saw a fellow bring a bike out of a garage, lean it against a dumpster and go away. He came right back and put on the bike what looked like a piece of cardboard. I was on the other side of Oak before you could say "free," which, coincidentally, is what was written on the piece of cardboard stuck on the bike -- I'm sorry, My bike!

It was not a junker, it was a good quality Norco. Sturdy aluminium frame, side-pull brakes, and even a mega-range gear. It needed new brake pads, some air in the tires, and most of the steel parts showed rusting. I talked to the fellow about all this. He just wanted to get rid of it all the same. He didn't ride it, It was just taking up space, he figured someone else could make good use of it. I thanked him sincerely; my 1990s Rocky Mountain, which I'd paid $185.00 for about a year previously, was far past it's sell-by date.

The Rocky Mountain went in a dumpster minus useful parts, and I put cartridge brakes on the Norco ASAP. I still need to get a longer seat-post. It's covered in union stickers, which I've decided to leave on -- I'll post a picture when I get a working camera.

I do feel that many people -- if they see me as a binner, but especially as homeless -- will at least allow for the possibility that I've stolen the bike. Should I even wonder how many people think I've stolen the laptop I'm creating this post on? A homeless binner, laptop-owning friend of mine was accosted in McDonalds not too long ago by a complete stranger who not only expressed his suspicion that the laptop was stolen, but actually took a photo of my friend (getting the incriminating laptop in the shot I suppose).

I know my friend didn't steal his laptop, because I helped him get it. I didn't steal my laptop, or my bike, or anything else I have. Honest.