Berrypicking and Being Beastly

Well, it seems that all I post about is being tired and cranky, and I don't like the idea of people getting that idea of me, but there's no sense in pretending. I am tired and cranky. At least I feel that way.

I felt rotten all day. I took an 11 o'clock nap in which I lay crumpled in my bed listening to music and whimpering miserably to the Lord about how I didn't want to complain. Even Laila rejected me.

After that I got up and tried to be an asset to society, i.e., help make lunch since Mom was really busy today with cooking. My main work was survival, and refraining from saying irrational mean things to perfectly innocent people. It was miserable, I tell you.

I think after lunch it got better. Mattie and the cousins and I read together outside and nearly finished The Girl of the Limberlost. Mary and Ethan (8 and 5) even joined us, and not only shared snacks, but sat for two hours while I read aloud. Now that's what I call attention span!
It's fun having our little club.

Tonight we went to our grandparents next door to have the supper Grammie made us, which was a delicious one. We visited and watched two baby cardinals fall out of their nest under the jasmine arbor. They looked too little to fly. They were just teeny tufts of down with a big frowny beak fixed on one end.

When the parents came around, they hopped and squeaked and opened up for worms. Frantically hopping here and there, the mother and father seemed to be leading them to a thicket on the edge of the yard, quite a distance away. They spent all evening hopping toward it. I hope they got there in the end.

What a precarious thing it's got to be to watch your babies throw themselves out of the nest on their teeny stubs of legs and hop around, just pathetic little fluffballs, knowing there's nothing in the world you can do to keep them from being eaten alive!! Helps me have more understanding for my Mom :)

It's finally acting like summer. Not that I was hurrying it, mind you! But tonight there was the familiar syrupy sweetness hanging in the air, the crickets singing from lush woods, the wildflowers still blooming in a blast of color along our road.

Flic was over on Sunday and we walked along, picking coral Paint Brushes, tiny purple flowers, big yellow ones, and the russet red ones with yellow on their tips, with the fuzzy center that Flic said reminded her of a caterpillar. I don't know all thier names.

And then the blackberries have come out. Dad, Mattie, Ethan, and I picked for hours on Friday, and then again on Monday, wandering the pasture, sweating and drawing bloodon angry briers, but anticipating the reward of our labors. Dad carefully disciples his little berrypickers along the way, honing our skills.

"You want to pick down low first, and then work up the bush," he says, "So that you don't smoosh the berries around your feet." And then, "Before you move on to the next bush, always look back at it- you'll see more from a different angle." We comb the bushes till the harvest is taken, and then trudge home with heavy jugs nearly full.

Then there is the gratifying moment when you bring in a full milk jug of bleeding berries and set it down in front of Mom, waiting to see what she will say, and she takes the jug, and looks in, and raises her eyebrows, and makes gratifying noises of approval. And then she makes a blackberry cobbler. Now, there's a moment!

I dread summer's heat and humidity and wanting to take multiple showers a day, but there are certain seasonal delights. Berries are among the chiefest.

Tomorrow is a new day. I'm so glad they start over :)