Thursday, July 20
Jul. 21st, 2023 03:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gottawonderToday I am grateful for:
A bright, sunny, summery day. Very hot and humid, but it sure feels like summer. The air is clear today, either from the rain or the direction of the wind.
I have been reading about the forest fires all over the Northern part of Canada, and it is just awful. It is the biggest, longest fire we've had in recorded history.
Though not the biggest concern, that will really wreak havoc on the price and availability of wood products and anything to do with wood.
I did talk with Trainwreck again, because yesterday I could only talk for about 15 minutes. We still mostly talked about depressing things like everyone getting old. TW's perspective is pretty gloomy, but she also doesn't get to associate with anyone healthy. She visits my Mom, our Sister N and her partner, who are both pretty frail, our aunt and uncle who are very frail. Those people are who she spends almost all of her time thinking about or interacting with. She herself isn't doing well. Kind of leads to a gloomy outlook.
My goal today was to try to find a U-pick with saskatoons available. A saskatoon, as far as I can tell, is the same thing as a service berry.
There was one right down the road from us that I contacted, and they said "come on down, we're open". I drove there, their giant metal gate was closed and locked, and they did not respond to my text that I was there to pick berries.
So I left. They texted me later in the day saying "sorry, we had to leave for an hour".
They really couldn't have texted me to let me know? Wasted my time and fuel.
I went to a different one that wasn't too far away, and they said online that they were "ALWAYS OPEN". Well, the phone number listed online wasn't in service any more, so it was a leap of faith that they actually WERE open.
They were.
She said there wasn't a lot left for berries, but I could give it a shot. It took me quite a while to fill my pail as the berries were small this year because of the dry spring, and she was right. They were pretty picked over. That meant each bush only had a handful of good berries so I had to walk a lot to fill my pail.
It was hot, muggy, and tons of mosquitoes, so kind of an ordeal. Yet, It wasn't all bad to be in a nice little field with lots of birds around.
When I finally filled my pail and walked back to the woman's house, she saw how sweaty I was, and just laughed. I laughed with her. In a way, my stubbornness was a bit ridiculous. She thought I had done well to fill the pail.
I paid her, and when she brought back my change she brought me a little bag of absolutely delicious little tomatoes. I laughed and said "what, you feel sorry for me?" She was like, "yes".
I went home and let everyone out,and ...picked some of our raspberries. That at least didn't take too long, and I got lots.
I will have to pick every day now for the next couple of weeks because new ones ripen every day.
Then I mowed the lawn until it was too dark to see. Since the last rain it has really sprung up again.
I had something to eat, rested a bit, then washed and put the saskatoons in bags and the raspberries on trays again, to be bagged once they are frozen. If you put them right into a bag unfrozen, they form a single solid block. If you freeze them on a tray they stay separate. I often use them a handful at a time to eat with yogurt, so I don't want a solid block.
I read this article, about how badly the African-American men who served in WWI were treated when they returned after the war. Apparently it was one of those things where America needed them badly to defend the country, but they didn't want them to think that they were actually equals in any way, or that they had value as human beings or anything like that. Sigh.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African-American_veterans_lynched_after_World_War_I?SargentTark
A bright, sunny, summery day. Very hot and humid, but it sure feels like summer. The air is clear today, either from the rain or the direction of the wind.
I have been reading about the forest fires all over the Northern part of Canada, and it is just awful. It is the biggest, longest fire we've had in recorded history.
Though not the biggest concern, that will really wreak havoc on the price and availability of wood products and anything to do with wood.
I did talk with Trainwreck again, because yesterday I could only talk for about 15 minutes. We still mostly talked about depressing things like everyone getting old. TW's perspective is pretty gloomy, but she also doesn't get to associate with anyone healthy. She visits my Mom, our Sister N and her partner, who are both pretty frail, our aunt and uncle who are very frail. Those people are who she spends almost all of her time thinking about or interacting with. She herself isn't doing well. Kind of leads to a gloomy outlook.
My goal today was to try to find a U-pick with saskatoons available. A saskatoon, as far as I can tell, is the same thing as a service berry.
There was one right down the road from us that I contacted, and they said "come on down, we're open". I drove there, their giant metal gate was closed and locked, and they did not respond to my text that I was there to pick berries.
So I left. They texted me later in the day saying "sorry, we had to leave for an hour".
They really couldn't have texted me to let me know? Wasted my time and fuel.
I went to a different one that wasn't too far away, and they said online that they were "ALWAYS OPEN". Well, the phone number listed online wasn't in service any more, so it was a leap of faith that they actually WERE open.
They were.
She said there wasn't a lot left for berries, but I could give it a shot. It took me quite a while to fill my pail as the berries were small this year because of the dry spring, and she was right. They were pretty picked over. That meant each bush only had a handful of good berries so I had to walk a lot to fill my pail.
It was hot, muggy, and tons of mosquitoes, so kind of an ordeal. Yet, It wasn't all bad to be in a nice little field with lots of birds around.
When I finally filled my pail and walked back to the woman's house, she saw how sweaty I was, and just laughed. I laughed with her. In a way, my stubbornness was a bit ridiculous. She thought I had done well to fill the pail.
I paid her, and when she brought back my change she brought me a little bag of absolutely delicious little tomatoes. I laughed and said "what, you feel sorry for me?" She was like, "yes".
I went home and let everyone out,and ...picked some of our raspberries. That at least didn't take too long, and I got lots.
I will have to pick every day now for the next couple of weeks because new ones ripen every day.
Then I mowed the lawn until it was too dark to see. Since the last rain it has really sprung up again.
I had something to eat, rested a bit, then washed and put the saskatoons in bags and the raspberries on trays again, to be bagged once they are frozen. If you put them right into a bag unfrozen, they form a single solid block. If you freeze them on a tray they stay separate. I often use them a handful at a time to eat with yogurt, so I don't want a solid block.
I read this article, about how badly the African-American men who served in WWI were treated when they returned after the war. Apparently it was one of those things where America needed them badly to defend the country, but they didn't want them to think that they were actually equals in any way, or that they had value as human beings or anything like that. Sigh.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African-American_veterans_lynched_after_World_War_I?SargentTark
