Posts Tagged ‘berries’
The cutest thing in the berries!
After dog walking tonight, I wandered down to the berry hedge to see what was up. And to check on tomatoes and peppers of course.
I walked around to the east side and yes, still plenty of berries not being eaten up by bugs yet.
Got to the end and looked up. There is something furry sitting there. Is that a possum? A raccoon? It’s awful small…. a baby something.
Went back around to the west (the side that faces the house) and had a better look without sun glaring in my eyes. I thought it was a cat, but all our cats are at the house having their dinner kibble.
It’s a baby raccoon. No, didn’t think about running back to the house for my camera. I just couldn’t believe that a raccoon of any size would be sleeping in the berries. He was perched way up high, and sound asleep. Oh, he’d shift every so often, but you could still tell he was sound asleep. Wish I’d thought of my camera!
Where is his Momma? I look down and there are lots of trails beaten into the grass and mulch and stuff. Evidently this guy went to sleep and Momma left him. Perhaps all the berries are NOT being eaten by bugs, but by raccoons! Heck, the raccoons are probably eating any bugs in the berries, too.
Poor little guy. Left in the berry hedge. But now I know why my dogs are way interested in the berries these days.
And maybe that burrow under the berry hedge has a Momma Raccoon, not a family of armadillos! I thought raccoons lived in trees, but you never know… and raccoons sticking close would explain why I’m missing an 8 week old kitten and one of my adult cats has chunks of flesh missing from his back.
(otoh, Sadie HAS been interested in eating berries lately… she has to stop to pull berries off the wild blackberries and when I took her to our berry hedge she was eating those, too. But only right off the vine… pick one for her and she turns her nose up at it, goofy dog)
Other news: I’m back to work on Monday. There will be a whole lot less late night posts from me. But I got called back to work like I was on lay off… and I’d thought I was fired. I’ve had a nice vacation, nearly 6 months of it and all thru the good part of the year. Was getting serious about finding another job, but nothing is really out there that I can do. So the job call back is a good thing.
hugs,
Vyx
Wacky weather! and berry talk
It’s been hot here for ages. And no rain… I had to water the blackberries and I’ve not had to do that before. Dry and cool is weird tho. It’s been doing this off and on super low temps… Hey, sorry, I need a sweater if it gets much below 80.
These last few days… whoa! I need a sweater on! We are having record lows. It’s July, and the low tonight is supposed to get to 55!!!! Normal July temps don’t drop below 70.
Today we finally got rain along with the low temps. Thank goodness. I think we got about an inch of rain, looking into all the things that can collect rain outside. Sweet! Now if it would just do this again say on Friday morning, next Tuesday, and keep repeating until we catch up… I might be able to skip watering my plants.
The giant green june bugs that show up in July are eating the blackberries. We filled 1/4 of the chest freezer with bags of berries and then I went around to neighbors asking if they wanted to pick any. Kids across the street picked a good gallon or so…. Brent with the nice veggies didn’t show up as far as I know. I told him (and his parents) to just come over and pick em, no need to knock on door or anything. And that they’d better be quick, because the bugs were about to get all the berries.
I’m not picking any more. Let the bugs have them. When those giant green july bugs get in there, they are worse than the little japanese beetles… those suckers fly into you and almost knock you down.
But since our berries did so well this year… even tho they did have to be watered…. Ron and I talked about having a blackberry farm. With what we have now, we could expand greatly. We’d have to take over some of the hay/pasture field, but it could be done.
Then I remember how much work it is to pick the berries… and they have to be picked if you don’t get customers. And I’m not an early riser these days, altho I guess I could trrain myself to be again. Maybe we could do thornless blackberries, some blueberries… and some fall bearing raspberries.
What I want are seedless berries. If there are such a thing. I love the flavor of a ripe raspberry, or blueberry or strawberry or blackberry… and I hate seeds. Even the tiny seeds of strawberries… well, I can’t stand em. I hate those seeds crunching when I expect to be eating something soft and soothing.
With our luck, the people that cut our hay/pasture field down for hay would miss our fencing and just brushhog our new berry plants and run over the fence. People that drive tractors around here aren’t paying a whole lot of attention to what they are running over. The fence now has been there for years… if we put up new fence they might not notice it.
Pipe dream anyhow. But seeing how much people were charging for fresh blackberries at the farmers market in Fayetteville… I could have been making big bucks. $4 or $5 a pint, which is still way better than the small grocery store price of $4 a half pint… and I picked gallons, dang it.
I will be doing something with the berries I picked…. Ron doesn’t care if they’ve been frozen or not. Cooking em amounts to the same thing anyhow. And my Mother owns a really nice food mill that I’ve used to take the seeds out of raspberries…. just gotta borrow it from her. I love that thing. I used it the last time I picked and froze lots of raspberries…. and gave everyone jars of seedless jam. I need to do the same with the blackberries!
I think I’m finally getting tired…
g’night for tonight!
