Blackberry Whine

This photo, such as it is, reveals a little of what I uncovered this weekend after many hours of bushwhacking.

Our neighbor was once asked:  How do you get the blackberries to grow so well where you are?

Her answer:  you hack at them mercilessly to keep them from growing all the way into your bedroom.

When this anecdote was first disclosed to me, I thought it was charming.  “What a quaint truism,” I thought, “of all the things, blackberries grow so well.”

And so, two years later, on our first sunny day after three weeks of apocalyptic rain, I creep out into the garden, where it takes a machete, a trowel, a mattock, and my own bloodied hands to rip the blackberries out of my garden.  Because it might be quaint, and might be true, but if your bedroom is your kitchen is your den is your office, it should not be a place for blackberries.  And after three weeks of ceaseless rain that makes you think you really OUGHT to be building an ark, the blackberries are everywhere.  And they may be tasty, but they’re blackberries, good ones, which means they’ll RIP YOUR FACE OFF.  And you need your face.  To eat blackberries.

In other news, the horse is recovering well.  Her owner has been rubbing fly ointment on her healing ladybits every day, and during yesterday’s appointment of that nature, the horse’s ladybits expressed themselves in the way that’s most healthy and natural.  The people were ecstatic at this:  “She came on my hand!” as she waved that hand around to show us just how well the healing was going.

(Hello, x-rated web searchers!   That’s disgusting!  Go read Equus!)