Picking berries...

           I love to pick berries. Some people hate it, my husband being one. But I love to stand there and be very quiet while you are picking. Of course, you hear the plink, plunk of each berry as it goes into the bucket but usually there are birds singing around you and the buzz of the bees as they try to steal the juice from the berries. My favorite spot to pick is on our creek bank. You have to stand in the water while you pick, so your feet are nice and cool while the rest of you is sweltering hot. The minnows are nibbling on your toes and you hope that a crawdad is not. The sun beats down on your head and the sweat runs in your eyes but I love every minute in it. I like to imagine myself biting into a hot bisquit with black raspberry jam on it while the snow is pouring down outside my window in January.  Thinking this way helps to keep me cool and it reminds me why I am doing this. When I was picking the other day, a movement caught my eye, about 6 inches from me was a tiny nest suspended between two pokeberry stalks. I had disturbed the mama bird and she hopped out and ran along the ground. I peeked in the nest and there where four brown and blue speckled eggs. I'm not sure what kind of bird this is, but she has the most beautiful little basket hidden right in our berry patch with some very precious cargo inside. You just never know what you will find when you are out in this creation that God has made for us. We have lots of berry bushes on the hill, up in the woods. Tim won't let me go up there by myself because of the bears we have. So then he has to go and it's just not the same, because he hates it so and then I have to listen to him...... Just between me and you, I would love to see a bear in our berry patch and I'm pretty sure they wouldn't eat me. I just can't convince Tim of this. So in the meantime I pick berrries close to the house and away from the bears. I take my blessings where I can get them... Happy July everyone!!