blackberry adventure

for over 3 years now, joel has talked about how he wants to go blackberry pickin'; every time we drive by vines on the side of the road, he gets so excited and says how good they are fresh. i don't know when the season is, so i always ask or bring it up at the most random time, but i've always wanted to go. his family introduced me to the wonderful taste of blackberry cobbler (a la mode), and i've been hooked ever since.

so during easter, we were headed home after picking up a movie, and out of nowhere, joel decided it was prime blackberry pickin' time--i was so excited!

after driving along a fence in the middle of nowhere, he decided to pull over into a driveway. of course he had to go check it out and see if there were any good ones, so when i saw his reaction, i knew it was a good spot. the pic is super fuzzy, but his excitement was too funny not to share:


he comes running back to the car, grabs a cup, and proceeds to explain to me acceptable and unacceptable berries. i was, however, slightly distracted by the distant stench of cow manure that the wind seemed to blow in my face every couple of seconds. joel ran off like an excited little kid picking away, and i'm sure i looked like a prima donna slowly stretching over thorns and weeds making sure only to touch the berry. it was so fun though seeing how excited he was just to be there and then getting really happy when i found a good one.


there weren't a ton of edible ones, and i was a little bummed because i wanted to make a cobbler that night. but oh well. maybe next time. we got back home; joel washed the blackberries (btw i'm using the word "washed" very lightly here), and i looked down only to see that the berries we just picked had bugs crawling around on them. bugs! i thought "ain't no way am i about to eat manure-smelling-bug-invested blackberries." but joel convinced me that the bugs were just added nutrition, so i went ahead tried one sans bug. :) i figured he's still alive, so it must not be all that bad for you. and i'm glad i did, because it was deeeeeeelicious! i'm just hoping it was bug-free, but i guess i'll never know for sure. it was good though, whatever it was.