FREEGRACE FRIDAYS! Lazy Summer Days...

It's Saturday.  Not Friday.  But while this post is a day late to qualify as "Freegrace Friday," I'm following our trash collector's lead:  they call the day before a holiday to inform us that due to the national day of hijinks scheduled during a weekday, they're going to come a day later than usual.

Fun Rural Fact:  We don't have municipal garbage pick-up in the boonies.  We have to pay someone to trundle themselves to our version of Mayberry to come get our junk.

Crawling out of the berry brambles off the side of the property near the ancient milk shed, Ray and I looked up to see our house serene and welcoming.  A wonderful sight when you're sweaty and beaten from berry picking.
She looks pretty darn good for having celebrated 220 Independence Days!
This week has been all about the berry bounty.  First came the strawberries.  They've begun to taper off, although the Alpine strawberries will produce little red nubbins all summer long.


4th of July berry pie!  With berries and a buttery crust this good,  it's not going to last long.   The raspberries and black raspberries have taken up the slack and are coming in gang busters.  The cherries are starting to shift their pigment production into high gear and the black & red currants and gooseberries bushes are threatening to bloom, just in time for late summer treats.


Tallulah and Ruthie decided that they'd help with the berry picking.  I'd always accused the goldfinches of pilfering all the best berries.  I've come to realize that the damn dogs are pretty efficient at picking out the sweetest morsels and snacking away on our brambles.


Speaking of pilfering, the ducklings, who've grown to be young ladies, have been making a feast of the tadpoles in the pond.  They dive down, their little tushies bobbing up out of the water, their feet wiggling in the air.  Where we once had thousands of baby amphibians we now have none.  None that we can see, anyway.  Now we know how to get bright shiny feathers, a diet rich in baby toad.  :(

I hope you all are having a sweet and wonderful summer weekend (or winter weekend on the flip side of the world).
Our backyard cherries, as captured by Ray.