Berries

It began to thunder as soon as I took the dogs out for a walk last night, but I still made it to the farmer down the street in time to get a pint of freshly picked blackberries.

Charlie, the farmer, inspires me. He has a double or triple lot in our suburban neighborhood, and after he retired, he expanded his garden to become the only farmer on downtown Silver Spring. He's out there every day, for hours and hours and hours, and he has a sign that lets you know what's available. I keep trying to get some of his blueberries, but the housewives clean him out by early evening.

Point being, though, that it's his garden that inspires me. He grows his blackberries and raspberries on fencewire strung above the ground between posts... K. tells me that this is very common, but it's so NEAT! and space saving! And everything he grows is in clean tidy rows or trimmed bushes or trained vines and I just LOVE it. Must be the German in me :)

A neighbor told K. that last year, a lady came and bought all of his strawberries-- which are apparently amazing-- and loaded pints and pints of them into her SUV. She then said to her companion, "lets get these home so we can freeze them." Charlie got righteously angry, pointed his old finger at her, and said "If I'd known you were going to freeze those, I wouldn't have sold them to you. Those are for EATING."

Damn straight, silly greedy woman.

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I get tomorrow off! So have a pleasant weekend, chickies. We're going to the daylily and wine festival in Fisherville, Virginia with my mom. Good clean family fun.