Picking Berries Makes Me Feel Like a Warrior

Summer is in full swing. I have been busy picking blackberries, red raspberries, green beans, zucchini, lettuce, and herbs and flowers. I made blackberry jam, and with the red raspberries, my friend Heidi and I have made 10 gallons of wine. The wine won’t be ready to consume until November. We added homemade apple juice I had made last year to the raspberry wine. We added half the sugar the recipe called for to the first five gallons of wine we made and it started to ferment immediately. It was brewing and foamingand spitting out fermentation the first week. It was so alive. It was amazing to watch and it looked like witches brew. Heidi’s partner, Scott is helping us make the wine. He has the equipment and has made his own beer before. He said that it was scary how rapidly the first batch of wine started to ferment. He said it was fermenting way too fast. The second five gallons we made this past weekend. We added one-third the amount of sugar called for in the recipe. This last batch of wine is fermenting at a more normal rate.

We have so many mosquitoes this year that I have feel as if I have to put armor on when I go out and pick the berries. The canes are thorny and at first I was going out and picking away with my arms and legs unprotected. I got so scratched up that it looked like a cat had attacked me. Another problem, besides the mosquitoes and thorns is there is hive with a nest of wasps buzzing on a cane. The hive is the size of softball and is gray in color the yellow and black wasps buzzing around it. I only discovered the hive yesterday. My sister, Joann came to pick raspberries and she pointed out the hive. I had been walking right past it and brushing against it. I didn’t see it as the raspberry leaves hid it. It is a mean looking entity.

My husband Tom went to town today to get some spray to kill the wasps. I have been stung three times by the wasps. The worse sting I had was on my stomach. It really hurt. It is still red, but I put a healing salve on it that I made with calendula flowers and the pain went away. My ten-year-old son, Timmy got stung two weeks ago by a wasp while picking raspberries and he hasn’t been out in the raspberry patch since. Joann called me last night after she went home and said she had a bad reaction when she got stung lastyear by a wasp. The doctor told her to avoid getting stung because she has such a bad reaction. I know that these stings can be fatal to some people. I am lucky that they are not fatal to Timmy or me. I can’t wait to get rid of those stinging wasps. I was picking berries this morning, but now that I know where the hive is, I don’t like being out there. The berries are incredible this year. It is a very bountiful year. I am not sick of eating pint after pint of berries, which I get to do each day. I will be glad when I don’t have to pick them every day, but I will miss eating them fresh. I made syrup with some of the berries and will attempt to make some jelly tomorrow. It is ninety degrees outdoors right now. I am going to put on my armor, of long pants, long sleeved shirt, socks, and boots and tie a white towel on my head and go out and pick raspberries right now. This is the best time of day, when the mosquitoes are not so active. I do feel like a warrior getting these berries.

Bad luck comes in threes

I went camping over the Fourth of July weekend at Whitewater State Park with my sister Kate and her husband and their three teenagers. I almost didn't go because the day before, my ten-year-old son, Timmy had fallen off the neighbor's pony. He spent the day resting on the couch and that night he threw up three times. I took him to the doctor early the next morning and he had a cat scan and all was fine. The doctor said I could take him camping but that Timmy should take it easy. Three of my other children met up with us at Whitewater along with two boyfriends and one son-in-law. The first night that we arrived at the camp we grilled two chickens on a charcoal grill. I had butchered the chickens the day before. We snacked on cheeses and chips and dips while the chicken cooked. My daughter Mary mixed up cosmopolitans, a drink of vodka, cranberry juice, lime and other ingredients. We also had wine and beer and lemonade to sip on. The weekend was starting out to be very relaxing. It was late and very dark when the chicken was finally done cooking. It was delicious. After we ate we washed up the dishes and stashed the food in our cars because of raccoons. Kate and her family had a campsite near the road and my campsite with my children was across the road, tucked back out of the way. We were all tired, filled with good food and snug in our tents by 11:30 p.m. Early the next morning my oldest son Dan drove over to Whitewater from Albert Lea and woke us up as he was rearing to get going fishing. We slowly dragged ourselves out of our tents. Kate and her husband started to make coffee on their small gas stove. I asked Dan to help me get water for the camp. We placed a five-gallon water container along with a two-gallon water container in his car and drove to a water hydrant to fill them up. I had rolled his car window down on the short drive and when we got back to the campsite I went to roll the window up and I hit the button that locked the car doors. Then I hit the window button to shut the window. I was getting out of the car and Dan had already shut the car off and had gotten out of the car. I saw that he had left the keys in the car and I felt that something wasn't right. I got out and closed the car door slowly and left it somewhat ajar. Dan said, "Dammit, you just locked my keys in the car."

Right at the same moment Kate and her husband realized that two coolers were missing. They were the two coolers that had our drinks and alcohol in them. It was not a pleasant way to start the day.

"Oh no,"said Kate, "bad luck runs in threes. I hope nothing else will happen."

Dan was upset; Mary was upset, as she had just bought one of the coolers the day before. It was nice large cooler that rolled on wheels. Mary doesn't like to camp and the day before when Kate asked her how often she had gone camping Mary had replied, "I don't really like camping. The best part about camping is when I go home and take a hot shower and can go to sleep in my own bed."

Mary looked miserable and she drank a cup of coffee and then went to her tent to go back to sleep. Dan and his cousin got the car unlocked with an old antenna. Kate's husband went and reported at the camp office that our coolers had been stolen. He was informed that no one had reported anything stolen from any campsites in the last three years. We had to let the incident go so it wouldn't ruin our holiday. No one was hurt and or harmed.

We had been violated but it was just bad luck. The rest of the day it rained. I went to my tent and read a stack of New Yorker magazines. Kate and her husband napped and the cousins played cards and Trivial Pursuit in one of the tents. It wasn?t a rousing Fourth of July weekend, but a restful one. A kind we all needed.

The Fourth of July is my daughter, Bridget's birthday. We usually have cake the night before the fourth as she was born at 1:20 a.m. This year we had strawberry and chocolate pie for her birthday. We were all in bed by 10:30 p.m. Mary complained that her tent was too damp and her dog, Wrigley had gotten into her tent when she and her husband were eating supper and he had muddied up their bedding with his filthy paws. That was the third bad luck incident we decided. It rained all night long. Timmy lay next to me in the tent in the pitch dark. We could hear the rain coming down, but we were nice
and dry.

Timmy said, "I really like camping and being outdoors. It makes me feel
safe and warm."

It was nice and we did feel safe. We had locked all the coolers in our cars and while our guard wasn't down about having the coolers stolen from the night before we all felt safe with one another. It was a good weekend to be with each other.