Calm blue ocean…
Okay, things are better. I’m going to take the high road here, especially since these folks are on their way out of town this weekend, hubby’s all about forgiveness, & I have a short memory for this kind of stuff anyway (see drama below if this doesn’t make any sense to you).
So friend’s hubby defended his diss today & we went to the defense. Not bad. My hubby, more importantly, defends his diss THIS Monday. Very good. Friend’s house is empty, so we’re having them for dinner tonight & probably tomorrow night as well.
In other news, hubby & I have finally picked enough thimbleberries for a few cups of jam. Figured out the trick only after my day picking them alone with the dog. You gotta have two people for this job. First of all, thimbleberries aren’t cultivated, so no one’s been so kind as to gather a field of them together for you to pick. Instead, they grow on hillsides near and into the tree line. & they don’t all generously ripen at the same time, so you might climb a hill (around these parts, they’re steeper than stairs at most points) only to pick the 1-2 ripe berries on a bush before climbing back down again to climb at the next spotting of the ruby red berries.
Sometimes, though, you get into a patch of them where you might find as many as 10 berries (slightly bigger than wild raspberries) in one spot. That’s where the person on the ground comes in handy. While you climb around, the person on the ground shouts out the location of additional berries you can’t spot.
This, and the fact that they’re too fragile to ship, is why 6oz of thimbleberry jam will run you between $12-16 around these parts. But it’s good stuff…a little sweeter than raspberries & with less annoying seeds.
Calm blue ocean…for me, that’s making jam with hubby. Last night we made the local strawberries I froze earlier in the summer into 8.5 pints of jam…there are no better strawberries than the ones in the UP, I think. Next we have 5 pints of local raspberries to jam & then the thimbleberries. We may try our hand at pickles when we get back down state next week. & I’m officially praying that our local blueberries come in before we have to leave here.
No other news here. We’re trying to enjoy the last few days up here & getting some writing done in the process. It’ll be good to go home & get back to school…this summer vacation has been too very stressful & too damn busy. I need a vacay from my so-called vacay.
Happy weekend chicks!
Thimble berries! I had to google them. I grew up calling them wine berries. Yesterday DH and I were crawling along in the car due to road construction, and there they were ~ a plethora of thimbleberries… Growing wild along the road side. I wanted to run out and pick ‘em but that would surely mean the flagger would wave our line of traffic through.
When I was a kid, many kids thought they were poisonous, leaving them all to me
Enjoy your jam.
Good luck on hubby’s upcoming diss. You wouldn’t be giving any of that thimbleberry jam away now would you? Not good for your diet.
LOL