It's Just Perfect

We are having the perfect Fall weather right now.

Sunday night we got a bit of rain.  Luna's dog dish/unofficial rain gauge showed about half an inch. 

You know that old saying about not killing a spider, because it will make it rain. 

See the dead spider in her dish?  It's that round blob in the bottom left quadrant.

Which do you think came first...the rain, or the dead spider?

We got enough rain to give everything a bit of a water.  Enough to top up the deep watering I did the week before.

Just enough water to keep the arugula growing.  Boy that stuff grows fast, I'll be taking the first cuts off it to the market in a week.

The weeds grow even faster though.

The kind of weather were the ground fog/meadow mist is the thickest before the sun comes up.

And then the sun comes up and it all burns off quickly.  

Huh, I didn't even notice that the clothesline was in the picture, I was in too much of a rush, going from window to window to try and get the rising sun and sun beams and Pride all in the same shot.

And then a couple of hours later we are out picking blackberries, AGAIN.  

I think we just about have enough buckets for the year, but it's hard to pass them up when they are big and plump. 

Needless to say, these ones didn't get picked.  It's hard to see, but there's a big fat spider in the middle of that web, and there was a crane fly, all parceled up and still struggling on the lower left.  

The spiders don't bother me, I just try to avoid destroying their webs when I can.  There are so many of them this time of the year.  It fascinates me that a spider can build a web across the middle of a wide trail.  Okay, I finally Googled it, and the here's a pretty good explanation on how it all comes about.

http://www.conservation.unibas.ch/team/zschokke/webconstruction.php?lang=en

And while we are blackberry picking, we can find a bit of time to toss a toy.  Although usually Luna and Calli are busy picking their own berries.

And this great weather is going to continue for another week at least.

Gotta love it!

I think Mother Nature's making it up to us for what we didn't get earlier.

Blackberry Time

We are back to black, berries that is.  Time to get the blackberries picked that will carry me through to next season.  Last year we picked 60 gallon ice cream pails full.  Each pail will make 12-13 cups of jam, or about half the amount of jelly.  There were still about 15 buckets left in the freezer by the time this year's crop began ripening.  I'm thankful for small mercies, and will pick quite a few less this year.  At the moment the count is 17 buckets.  Still a long way to go.

This is the time of year my hands seem to be permanently stained.  If I have to go out in public, I usually pour some lemon juice on my hands and rub it around and work it under my nails with a scrubbing brush.  It does help to fade the stains.  

The dogs are gorging themselves on the berries each time we go out to pick.  This leads to copious large black poops:(  We see coyote poop that looks the same, but I'm okay as long as I don't see any bear poop like we did two years ago.  I tried to get a decent picture or two of the dogs picking their own berries, but I failed.  Maybe tomorrow, or the next day, or next week.  The dogs will be eating them for another month at least.  Thank goodness we'll be done picking before then.

Give Them an Inch

And oh those blackberries will take a mile.  I often joke that if we did nothing about them, in five or ten years (depending on how frustrated I'm feeling about them at the time), our place would be just one giant blackberry patch.  I do pick a lot of blackberries, and it's really handy just having them on our own property, but it's a constant battle to keep them under control.

Last Spring David had cut off at the ground, a giant patch and it's off-shoots that were growing along the fence between the hay field and a driveway that went between that fence and the riding ring fence.  We had kept cutting them back for a while last year, and then had eased off, and now they were well on their way to taking over again.  It was a nice mild morning, no rain, so I figured I would give the loppers that I got for a Christmas  present a workout.  I have no issue with getting a practical gift for Christmas.  

They had nice long red handles. 

All tools should have brightly coloured handles.  That way when you put them down and then forget about them, it's much easier to find them.  David gave me the loppers.  Maybe it was his way of telling me to get cutting the blackberries back myself.  They cut like a hot knife through butter.  By the time we were done though, and had several times attempted to cut through the fence wire as well as a blackberry cane, the blade edges didn't look quite as smooth as they did at the start.

Every year, the plants send out new shoots, that will bear the next year's berries.  Some of those shoots are as thick as a man's thumb, are covered in thorns, and can easily go 15 ft or more.  They arch up and over the previous year's growth, and then when they touch they ground, they start forming roots, and that's the basis of whole new clump

Because these particular blackberry clumps had never been that great to pick, they had never been cut back much.  Usually as you are picking the berries one year, you have to cut the new canes back, because they are in your way.  In that way, the clump is kept under control to some degree.  

We kept switching off.  One cutting and the other pulling the canes back far enough to be sure that they were all cut off at the ground.

Jake and Luna figured they had us sort of trapped, so they kept bringing us their toys.  Eventually we got smart and started  throwing them over the fence.  Then they had to run to the other end of the field, through  the gate and back up the other side of the fence.  We gained  a few seconds between throws (or kicks) that way.

Just after we were finished, the rain started  (again).