Tis the season!

It is that season again. The season that I love and hate at the same time. The one that causes me so much pain and joy simultaneously.

 (I do love looking out the window and seeing these girls sharing with each other and not a bit of fighting!)

Blackberries!!! All the juiciness and sweetness, mixed with thorns embedded in my legs, arms, hands, and back. The happy smiling faces, mixed with stained clothes and carpets. The children eating healthy, mixed with sticky floors and door handles. The hours and hours spent picking through those nasty thorns, mixed with delicious blackberry syrup, pie, cobbler, pancakes, and anything else we can throw them into. It is all worth it for one month of faces like these.

I honestly can't believe how well the blackberries have done in our yard. The plant that we currently have came from one little 4 inch stick (all the others died off before they could establish). Over the past 6 or so years, it has grown bigger and bigger each year. This year we have picked about 2/3 of the berries and we have probably already had 5 or 6 big mixing bowls FULL of berries. We still have another good week or two of berries to pick. I will be thankful for the day that I can stop mopping the floor three times a day, but at the same time I will be so sad that all the fresh blackberries are gone. I only have 2 more years of these blackberries before we start all over again with a new house and new yard. I have to enjoy every moment with these bushes that I can get! (Just an FYI, we will try for thorn-less blackberries at our next house!)