This Little Place Here: Shelling peas, picking berries, campfires and sunsets

That about sums up what's been going on here lately. Well, that and a whole lot of weeding in the garden. About two hours worth of weeding every night. It's a big garden, with, unfortunately, a lot of weeds. Seems like what I grow best is weeds. One of these days I'm going to try eating some of them, like lambs quarters and purslane. . .

But nobody really wants to read about weeding the garden. And only a few people want to read about eating weeds. So, how about I talk about the old fashioned enjoyment of sitting on a covered front porch, during a gentle rain, shelling peas and talking with my daughters? One of those chores where they go "Oh, Mom, do we have to?" and then five minutes later are happily chatting and laughing while their fingers are busy popping open pea pods and stripping the round, fresh peas into a colander to be washed, then blanched and frozen. It's kind of a Walton's moment: the womenfolk sitting around in the shade of the porch, hands busy working while visiting and having a good time

Basket of fresh picked peas from the garden.

The results of about 30 minutes of 'work' with my DDs.

Well, maybe not totally a Walton's moment; DD1 was intermittently texting her boyfriend the whole time. However, she was texting about shelling peas (he's never done that) and dancing in the rain (also something, apparently, he's never done). She has vowed to teach him to do both. He's agreed to learn, without passing judgment on our strangeness. I like him. ;0)

The black raspberries are about finished here, which means the honest-to-goodness blackberries should be coming on soon. Saturday evening I picked a handful from the volunteer blackberry patch on the south side of the garden that I have kept DH from mowing down since spotting the first shoots in 2009.

The first blackberries of 2011.

Sunday afternoon I suited up (jeans, socks, boots, long-sleeve button-up shirt, and gloves) and went to the woods to see what I could see. What I saw was poison ivy and oak intertwined with the brambles, as expected, and hence, the incredibly hot clothes for a 90 degree July day. I got my first case of poison ivy/oak (I think oak, I could roll in ivy as a kid without ill effect) within a month of moving to this little place here, and it was a bad one, requiring steroids to conquer. So, I sweat to death whenever I'm out in the woods in the summer now, because I have sworn I will never, ever, get poison oak or ivy again!,

But my nemesis green itchy stuff wasn't all I found--there were also some blackberries ripe. And the very last of the gooseberries, and, to my delight, a few more red raspberry plants than the year before. Now, for thirty-some years of my life I declared I did not like raspberries (other than the little wild button-type black raspberries), and I would not eat anything raspberry flavored. Red raspberries were just blech!

Then two summers ago I saw one, just one, red raspberry glowing like a ruby amongst the blackberry brambles in the woods. I ate it. I loved it!! I cannot possibly describe the difference between a 'store' raspberry and a wild raspberry; all I can say is they are not the same creature. So it is with joy that I find a few more red raspberries the last two summers.

To make my berrying excursion even cooler, Sunday I also found a golden raspberry. I ate that one too, but I made sure to just crush it in my mouth, swallow the juice and spit out the seeds onto the ground so that hopefully they will grow more golden raspberries in years to come.

I think it is so amazing all that God provides us in our woods. Someday I will do a post on those things.

A quart of mixed berries.

The days have been hot, but the evenings not so bad. While the girls and I have weeded the garden each evening, DH has worked on splitting our gigantic pile of wood. His splitting and stacking has created quite a bit of debris: bark, small sticks, and a couple of wickedly knotty chunks. So we've had a few campfires this weekend, burning up the debris and relaxing after a sweaty day's work.

It's so relaxing to sit out by the fire ring, in chairs made of reclaimed deck boards (20 years as my parents' deck, now into their fifth year as chairs at our fire ring). We watch the swallows and bats swoop overhead, eating bugs. Yay swallows and bats! We watch the fireflies come out as dusk settles in. We watch the sky change colors as the sun makes it's descent behind the trees.