Blackberry Bounty!

This is an amazing ime of year it is blackberry time! More than 10 years ago a friend twisted my arm to take one blackberry plant.....I confess that I planted it where I would not see it! LOL

But since then I've learned to appreciate this easy care plant. Ok you need to trim it in September but besides that it requires NO CARE! I'm NOT KIDDING! REALLY!

I trim it in the fall (with gloves of course) and let it go. This year I've had a major BUMPER crop (sorry for the sintax, remember I am a french canadian by birth).

Usually I have to fight bird and probably rodends for fruit, but not this year....is it that the harvest is late and birds can stuff themselves on Saskatoon berries? Maybe!

Now I can understand why blackberries are soooo expensive in the farmer's market....They are quite time consuming to harvest! And you have to deal with mosquito bites, thorns and bending and stretching.

Here's part of the blackberry plant. It is really a good 12 feet longer. Usually it grows in height not lenght...

That is really strange!

Here the heat is brutal and even with the best will I wasn't able to really get ahead in the garden because of the crazy heat. I water and that is about it. I float around a lot in the pool. The vegetable garden looks great: I might have tomatoes...I see two smallish ones....No cherry tomatoes.....I picked a yellow sweet pepper....We eat our lettuce almost every night and I think we will munch on green or yellow beens next week.

On the thrifting front, well you know it's not that easy to thrift when you work full time....and most of the church basements are closed during the summer.....bummer!

But we did find this at Renaissance:

A nice shaker with all the parts and a bar spoon as a bonus for 2.99$ SWEET!

Oh I forgot to show a pic of the blackberries and my latest Pyrex find....

Yep I got a Square Flower Green cassrole, which I never liked before but now I just LOOOOOOVVVVVEEEEEEE the pattern! Unfortunately the seller never mentionned that this sweet casserole had quite a ride in the dishwasher.....

On the job front well believe it or not I still feel stressed out of my mind!

The company decided to add permanent positions to my group (basically my job was becoming permanent) and if I wanted to stay I had to apply for it and pass an interview, which I did.

I didn't get the job...some guy who's not bilingual (remember this is Québec folks and you need to speak both french and english to get a decent job) but has an accounting degree got the job......

I also had another interview but I'm still waiting for the result....

in my current job well now is the time when my crappy training comes shining through! It seems I did a lot of mistakes and now the crapp is raining all over the place!

I'm sure I will pull through because I'm a fighter and always have been! I survived my crazy mother didn't I?

Have a great Monday :) 

Friday Mish Mash

Today I will blog about an ecclectic mix of stuff...

Last year I had enough of my neighbors complaining that my blackberry bush was srcatching their cars ( In my humble opinion they just had to drive more to the other side to avoid such incidents). It was not like the bush was keying their cars (?%$!"/$%)! So I gave said bush a MEGA trim last fall, so big was the trim that i was sure I would'nt have much of a blackberry harvest...Well SURPRISE! I have a bumper crop, I gathered at least 12 cups of those little nuggets of flavor, some jam will be made shortly, but for now they all went in the deep freeze. First pic is my hand stained with blackberry juice- all out of focus thank you very much! lol

Second pic : Those same neighbors have a statue of a little boy sitting on the patio. The strange thing is that it is a statue of a little black boy painted to look like a little white boy.... An attempt at humour? I doubt that very much...I'll have to investigate!

When I moved to the suburbs I found their lawn ornements real weird... One could see at lot of little black boys fishing, black jokeys carrying lanterns, mexicans pulling donkeys and tons of virgin marys in half baths just like a grotto....

Now we are being gentrified...housing prices are going up and people are jonesing to keep up with the jones....add to that the politically correctness wave...Most of those ornements are gone! Yet some people find it perfectly ok to underpay and abuse the migrant workers that come to pick our crops (Go figure!)

Last pic: I had never seen such a funky looking caterpillar so I just had to take a picture!

Tonite I'm making an Indian meal, tandoori tofu,curry lentil, paneer with spinach and basmati rice. First attempt at tandoori tofu, I'll keep you posted.

I'm also taking a keyboard fingering course (I had to translate doigté de clavier so I'm guessing) to help me type better and not injure myself....

Have a great weekend all! :)

Blackberries....And a Pyrex giveaway!!!

Blackberry season is in full swing on the side of my house! I just love those little nuggets of juicy goodness!

I eat a couple but the bulk goes to make the most delicious Blackberry jam....So good!

A friend gave me a root in a bucket about 10 years ago...I was clueless about growing them and not really interested to say the least! LOL

They are the easiest berries to grow, I don't water them, I don't fertilize them, the only thin I do is give them a good trim in the fall (cut all the branches that bore fruits).

And I finally understand why farmer's market sell them at crazy prices....They are a pain to pick!

All those thorns! For 2 weeks in July I'm covered with scratches. Well, why don't you cover yourself, you might ask?

Because FAT SWEATS!!! LOL! Thanks Tracy for that one! And it makes for great stories....

Not 15 minutes ago I got stuck in the bush...I had

a big branch full of thorns stuck in my hair! Ouch! And funny at the same time!

A couple of years ago I had a sweater and got stuck real deep in the blackberry bush....And couldn't get out and I kept calling for help...Yes it's embarrassing...LOL

In the Pyrex cup it's what I picked 20 min ago. I have to go back tomorrow morning otherwise the birds will eat them and crap purple all over my patio!

As for the Pyrex giveaway...well I'm so excited to have a new computer (It works like a charm) That I decided to spread the joy!

So please leave a comment on this post before July 19th and I will send 2 lucky winners a little Pyrex refrigerator dish! Now don't be shy, everyone is included! I will ship to Europe and to the U.S not to mention Australia! So spread the word I want lotsa and lotsa comments and new readers!