Good Intentions

The past few days have been cooler than it's been here in weeks, and a soft breeze today feels like it blew in straight out of the sea.  Two butterflies sway with the tall white phlox, drinking the nectar.  For the first time in weeks, I feel like weeding the flowers and cleaning the house. I quell the impulse, and check on my raspberries.

They've been struggling, poor things, in the long stretch of 100 degree days (give or take a few degrees), but now the earlier work of the bees has paid off, and a few of the brave beauties have ripened.  I pick a handful, pondering my options.  They would jazz up a fruit salad, or maybe I could put them on Don's breakfast cereal.  No sooner had this come to mind than the rationalizations set in.  "Don doesn't like raspberries as much as I do", and "I'd better taste one to see if it's good".

I roll a red berry over on my tongue, squishing out each precious drop of juice.  It goes down easily, and I sample another.  As I consider how to use these ruby gems, I notice that the pile in my hand is becoming smaller, as are my options.  It isn't long before the handful of berries has disappeared, and with it my fleeting thoughts of generosity.

C'e sempre domani.  (There's always tomorrow.)

Linking with Rural Thursday

Textures from Bonnie at Pixel Dust Photo Art,

and Leslie Nicole

Rain, Raccoons and Raspberries

Last Sunday afternoon God tipped the water jars of the heavens and poured them down on our corner of the Ozarks. From the front porch, where I went to watch, a cascade of rain came off the roof and hammered the brick patio, gushing into the flowerbed, where plants stood up to their knees in water. Sheets of rain overhead and distant rolling thunder combined their voices with the wind into a sound like a vast roaring ocean. Frogs, in their element, lifted their voices above the roar.

By Monday morning every visible surface outside was still drenched with moisture, and any stir in the leaves showered leftover rain on whatever happened to be below. Three baby raccoons with spiky wet hair followed their mother out of the woods to eat the cracked corn Don had thrown out for the deer. When a doe appeared, they all scampered up a nearby tree. There's nothing quite as cute as those babies right now, but if last summer's memory serves, once the raspberries get ripe, those little masked robbers won't be quite as appealing. Meanwhile, with all this rain, the raspberries are growing like the national debt, and in a month or so, somebody, the raccoons or us, will be enjoying them. Stay tuned.

Raspberry Pollinators

Raspberry Pollinators

A few years ago, Don built a small raised garden with railroad ties in our back yard, and it now contains a pretty good patch of raspberries.  Those sweet morsels happen to be my favorite food, so I like to keep a good eye on them.  Last week they were just starting to bloom, and Saturday I thought I'd take an inventory of the pollinators. There was one wheel bug, perched menacingly on a leaf, a few wasps, and only one bee.  I watched the bee for a few minutes, and it was behaving like no bee I had seen before.  It was flying very quickly from one blossom to another, just long enough to inventory them.  My friend Virginia, who knows such things, reminded me that this was a scout bee, collecting information for the rest of the hive.  Sure enough, the next day the patch was swarming with pollinating bees, for which I am very grateful.  Can raspberries be far behind?