Surprised by Purple (twice)

We have been making smoothies for several weeks now, usually with the berries we pick. Raspberries were the dominant fruit for awhile, since they ripened before the blackberries and we have many more raspberries and blackberries than blackcaps or golden raspberries. So a typical smoothie was mostly raspberries, with a few blackberries, less blackcaps, and an occasional golden raspberry. This makes a smoothie that is some shade of pink. Well, last week the raspberries began to slow down and the blackberries took over, so the fruit I picked was almost all blackberries with just a few raspberries. I put all the ingredients in the blender and let the electricity work its magic. When I turned around, I was quite surprised to see a very different color of smoothie than anything I had ever seen before!


The pictures really don't do the color justice. I had no idea that this shade of purple could result from anything other than Red 5 and Blue 7 (or whatever those weird artificial dyes are that they put in food). I can't imagine what an all-blackberry smoothie would look like, but maybe in the next couple of weeks I will find out!


I have also been surprised to see our sweet corn turning a lovely shade of purple.


The tassels, stalks, and even the leaves of the more mature plants are quite purple.


I would have expected something like that from our ornamental corn (which still looks quite ordinary and green), but I have been surprised by purple sweet corn. (Hopefully I didn't mix the seeds up, I have been having some trouble with that. :-/) I'm curious to see if the kernels will be purple too? Further bulletins as events warrant!