Blackberry Summer

(Wasn't that a book by Margaret Meade?? No wait....Blackberry Winter. (It's a miracle my feeble brain could even come up with this...) lol

  We started picking blackberries here on Honeysuckle Hill this week...so far-- some breakfast berries, one Blackberry Doobie (Thanks Wild Magnolia !!) and 4 or 5 quarts in the freezer. And lots of scratches and thorns and weed rashes on the ankles. It's just part of the package...the berries this year are huge and sweet and abundant. Some years, if it gets too hot and too dry too soon, you get small seedy berries that aren't good for much. These are all wild blackberries, so we're at the mercy of Mother Nature (which we always are anyway, if you think about it). They all come on so quickly and you spend a couple of weeks picking madly and trying to beat the birds to them. And the Japanese beetles, who have quite a fondness for them as well. But there's nothing on earth like popping a fresh off the vine sweet blackberry in your mouth. We are blessed to have so many brambles on 3 sides of our property.

One of the peach trees got so top heavy with fruit that it broke the branch...right where it should have been pruned last year, the Irishman says. lol  Problem was , we had one really cold snap last winter and that was it. Apparently we missed it. Anyway, the apple tree is absolutely covered with apples and the other peach tree is loaded too. This is going to be a good year for fruit preservation. Berries, apples, peaches...yum.

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  Saturday we went to a solstice celebration out at the La Vista Ecological Learning Center.  It was awesome...2 astronomers came with their equipment--scopes and special lenses and filters-- and we got to look at the sun. It was pretty damn cool. We turned the sun staff and had a scavenger nature hunt and ate watermelon and drank lemonade. We each introduced ourselves by name,  told where we grew up and then shared our favorite childhood summer memory. Mine was sitting on a picnic table in our backyard, with a bunch of neighbor kids (who were mostly my cousins) and eating watermelon seeds and seeing who could spit the seeds the farthest. It was really fun and interesting...esp. listening to the city kids who got to spend some time in summer on grandparents or aunts and uncles farms. I made a new friend and we had a really delightful time.

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  Saturday night after we got home,. I made supper of leftovers and then found a recipe for a dessert called a Blackberry Doobie. Sandra at Wild Magnolia had mentioned it to me, and I hadn't heard of it. I asked--Do you have a recipe?? and Do I need an oven??  lol  I looked up the recipe for it, and it turns out it is a sweet fruit soup with buttermilk sweet dumplings in it. It's an old southern recipe.  I did a couple of things wrong, but it was still one of the best blackberry desserts I have ever had. I can't wait to make it again...I'm going to put the recipe on Dragon Woman's Kitchen...

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  This morning we went into town for a meeting and then stopped on the way home and bought 4 bales of straw from a local farmer. His wife came out and jerked those bales out of the shed like nobody's business. I was impressed. The Irishman leaned over to me on the way out and said--see? I told you she was a big old farm gal.  She was tall and big...and had a baby under one arm and reached in there with her left and pulled those bales down.  lol  Farm women are freaking AWESOME.  And that's all I'm saying on the subject. lol

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  Well, this weekend is running out, and I am tired and sore. Sore from picking blackberries on the hillside. Sore from bending over and picking the first batch of green beans. (YAY).  Sore from picking 2 quarts of snow peas in 3 days. From bending over the lettuce beds, picking picking picking. lol I cleaned the chicken coop this afternoon and we tried integrating the chickens again with the pullets...I eventually went back in and separated them again,. as the older Australorp is bullying them all and they wouldn't come out of the coop into the run.  The older Buff Orpington, on the other hand, goes right up in the coop with them and has no problem at all. Hopefully when the new flock gets a little older and bigger, they won't be so intimidated by her.  It's so interesting to watch the social behavior of chickens..one of the many reasons I love having them.  I cleaned and refilled all the water bowls too, as we were forecast a high today of 97. I think it made it to 95.  Hot hot hot.

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  We have some family stuff going on right now...not with us but it's a sad time. Please hold us in your prayers...I know it will all work out exactly the way it is supposed to. Still, it's a hard journey and hard times. But it's the storms we weather that make us who we are, and the relationships in our lives that teach us about ourselves and about the things that are truly important in the world.

  As long as we're learning...everything is going to be alright.

Namaste.

Tuesday on the Prairie

 Been a bit of  a  loud world of late.  I am spending some quiet time right now, with a tiny kitten curled up on my chest. Not exactly conducive to keyboarding. lol  But she sleeps away and the house is peaceful, and that's all good.  Was up early and on the road, off to a meeting that started at 9. Scurried around getting animals fed before I left. and wound up being a little late.

  The new phone does not work well here at the house. Damn.  I may be stuck with AT&T...which will annoy me even more than I already am.  It works like a charm in town. Very clear and strong and everything except what I need. Which is to have  phone at home.  Arrgghhh...whatever happened to tin cans and string ????  I am not giving up yet though. I still have the other phone connected, and thought I'd better try this one first. Glad I did.  

  I need to make some fertilizer for my garden, I think.  Maybe I'm just not being patient.

  Yesterday I had to come up with a vegetarian dish for the Irishman  to take to his potluck.  I happened upon one of my Vegetarian soup books and thought--ooo.....a chilled soup would be the bomb in this heat !!  So I started looking around the garden and cupboards and sure enough, I had all the ingredients to make Gazpacho. So I made that (and a mess of my kitchen!) with juicy organic tomatoes and bell peppers and cucumbers, parsley and cilantro, garlic and onions and tomato juice.  A little honey, a little cayenne....a little dill weed, a little sea salt.  YUM.  It is beautiful yo look at and scrumptious to eat. Just had another cup of it for lunch.  Husband said it was a hit at the meal...everyone wanted the recipe.  Of course, I won't give it to them.  lol

  Sigh...the woman has not called me about my schedule for the part-time job. I don't know what this means, but it is getting on my nerves.  I guess she has a lot on her plate, and I will call her this evening if I don't hear from her, I think. Of course, all my doubts and anxieties come rushing right up to the center stage...and I wonder if she is a flake, or has decided not to hire me.  

  Okay. I guess I should go out and see about the blackberries. Am freezing about a quart a day. Things are getting ready to rev up here in the food production business.  I'll be a regular whirling dervish.

  Namaste.

WHAT ?!?!?!?! Wednesday already?!?!?!?!

From a cave somewhere in Virginia, in the Shenandoah Valley....

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I don't know how I have lost 2 days this week, but there'll probably be more times like this. I get so busy this time of year that I start falling asleep at the keyboard ! So, I'll just apologize ahead of time and hope for the best...lol

It's been a lovely day of taking a meeting to a woman who's just had a surgery. Got busy early and made a big salad with all sorts of wonderful ingredients, garnished with eggs from my Rhode Island Reds and pickled beets (from my garden, of course), and radishes and cucumbers. We had a wonderful time and she was delighted to have company. I remember how it was when I got hurt, and was so blessed by women coming by with lunch and a Big Book...I am grateful to be able to return the favor.

The itchies are abating, I think. I still have a handfull of blisters on my right hand, but the neck and face are clearing up, thank goodness. I just hope I learn my lesson from this little incident...
never again will I weed without gloves -- at least not along the fencline like that. (Made a solemn promise, with and without an oath...)lol.

We are having a dessert potluck tomorrow night at the women's meeting monthly open speaker meeting. I think I will make the pie again, only blackberry this time, with the fancy crust. I still have quite a lot of blackberries from last year in the freezer, as we had a record crop. I hope they do as well this year, and I'll make jam again as I'm about out. We always have lots of different desserts that people bring and it's always fun trying other peoples recipes.

Little Caylee is asleep here by my desk (her favorite place at night). She is growling softly in her sleep and her muscles twitch as she chases the elusive rabbit in her dreams. She is a very good dog...always comes immediately when I whistle for her and stays close to home. As opposed to the other 2 dogs, who roam the world over and are often outside of earshot.

I was thinking today about how easy it is to not notice all the blessings around you...how easy it can be to take life for granted and not appreciate the subtle graces and gifts that surround us every day. I think it was Einstein who once said "There are 2 ways to look at the world. One is as if nothing is a miracle and the other is as if EVERYTHING is a miracle." I choose the way I look at my world today . Like gratitude, I get to choose this every day, if I so desire. I look for the miraculous in the mundane, the joyful simplicity in the details of my life. I can experience the awe and wonder every minute, if I want.

How cool is that?


Namaste.