Berry Exciting

The raspberries have started to roll in. A huge harvest this year. And I didn't do a thing to deserve it. Okay, maybe a little pruning in the spring and pulling choking Morning Glory vines out when I can. But really not much else, which makes it even more of a treat to enjoy the delicious berries.

They are fleeting though and it demands vigilance. On a sunny day an unripe berry will be ripe by afternoon, so the patch requires constant monitoring to catch each berry at peak ripeness and flavor.

I don't know what type of berries they are, other than they are twice bearing, once in June and again into October / November. But the second harvest isn't as good as the first, or maybe I am just so jaded by then by all the other garden treats that they can't measure up to the rapture of the first fragrant, red produce.

They are reliable, producing an abundance of berries each of the 5 years I've lived here. And although they came under the fence from the neighbor's patch, and although these neighbors, mostly the kids, love to remind me that the raspberries actually belong to them, I feel no remorse popping them into my mouth and swooning in plain sight of these same neighbors. And I pretend not to notice when these neighbor kids come over to my side of the fence and raid the berries.

The patch on my side is now about twice the size of theirs and I suggest to them that the berries are happier living with me. And then I pop another into my mouth and smile.