No, it’s not Christmas – it’s wild black raspberry season. Wild black raspberries on vanilla ice cream is easily my favorite treat. Luckily for me, there’s a small patch I have access to nearby with just enough berries for a couple nights worth of snacking for me and the kiddos. With the drought last year, all of the berries were little, hard and seedy. But all of the rain this year has been perfect. I can’t remember picking so many consistently large berries – while being attacked by so many consistently large mosquitoes.
And for a small patch, there were a lot of berries. I just hope I’m not disappointed in the taste of the black raspberries I planted in the garden if they don’t match up to these.
It’s a good sign when the berries are so juicy that it takes longer to wash the stains off your hands than it did to pick the berries. At least I wasn’t scratched up from all the thorns.
Speaking of getting scratched up, the guard dog was on duty again last night. I had been picking berries for about five minutes when I heard something that sounded like a cat with it’s tail in a door. Pip was no longer five steps behind me, so I thought I’d better take a look. Sure enough, as I walked to the edge of the cornfield I heard the sound again, then two barks, and then more cat-in-the-door screeching. I whistled once for Pip and everything got quiet for a second before the tops of the corn started thrashing about. Something was running through the corn towards me; screeching again. Before I could take a step back, Pip pops out of the corn field and onto the road with a screeching raccoon in tote. (It’s a good thing we keep her up to date on her shots.) In one motion, she flipped the raccoon on it’s back, grabbed it again, and with loud growl broke it’s neck with two strong shakes. Then in true Pip fashion, she carried the raccoon to the back door of the house and sat waiting for praise from the kiddos.
She had that same look on her face the rest of the night. We know she’s half lab, but will never know what the other half is – and maybe that’s a good thing. But if the kiddos want a farm cat or two, they’re going to have some work to do.
