I donned long pants and a long sleeve shirt as I needed to penetrate the wine berry bushes to where the big fat juicy berries were ripening and that meant briers. While these bushes have stickers that will scratch you they are nothing like wild blackberry bushes that will hurt you and leave severe scratches. I picked about a 1/2 gallon or so before calling it a day and was soaked with sweat as well(the long sleeves and pants really hold the heat in). Nancy froze several bags of the berries for cobblers and jams and gave some away as well as what we eat each morning on our cereal and oatmeal. My next pickings will go towards making some "fruit of the vine" stuff.
We decided as it was close to lunch time to have a frozen pizza loaded with fresh mushrooms for lunch. While we waited for that to digest I headed out to rake more moss from the garden side of the front yard. Once again I raked several 5 gallon buckets of the green stuff from the grass and discovered lots more grass than what was showing. We decided to head to the top of the mountain for our daily hike. Once again it was lonely on top despite it being a Saturday and saw no one. After an uneventful hike we headed back down and then sort of chilled for awhile as the humidity had sweat dripping from the bough of my straw hat. The one thing that is really irritating about being outside here in the mountains is the gnats. They are 3/4 mouth and teeth with a real bite; there are some that are kamikaze that will fly right into your eyes and then some of them love to venture into my ear canals. I have this straw hat that looks like the hat you see worn by the folks in Southeast Asia. Now I can appreciate why they wear those funny conical looking hats as they help keep the bugs from your face and neck.
Well Nancy made a delicious dessert called "better than Robert Redford" to take with us to our small group gathering at the Dalton Ranch. We enjoyed a sumptuous supper of barbecue along with slaw, baked beans, sliced home grown cucumbers and then this dessert. Yeow that was some fine eatin'! Afterwards we all headed down to the barn area where they were treating some of their alpacas for a worm related illness. Nancy got some great photos and I will post them at the end of this ramble. She wanted a close up of her and their huge mild mannered Angus bull; but he was more interested in a cow. She did pet him a couple times but this was no in your face photo opt for him.
We headed on back to the house and played 3 games of Sequence and the girls won all 3 games so it was over for the night with that game. We then played a new game called Hit or Miss and once you learned how to score it was quite fun and thought provoking. We had no real winner as we made up some of the rules for the first time but I see us playing this game again as there is some strategy involved.
Well we headed for the cabin just after dark and it was close to 9:30 or so before we got home. Nancy headed for the showers and I read until it was time for some shut eye. Today Sunday I have a pickle ball match set up for the evening so lets hope the rain stays away as it did this evening which
