Lyme Disease

I spent the afternoon risking several deadly illnesses just to make sure that I had fresh wild blackberries for his desert.

I had spied them when I got to work. They were just in the bushes at the edge of the parking lot. I thought, "I'll pick myself a handful after work," all I have ever gotten were just a handful of wild blackberries at at time. And handful is a generous way of describing 6 berries. Then I promptly forgot about them for the rest of the day. Until I went to go home. That's when I wandered down to the edge of the bush in my sandles and skirt and realised that there were more berries there than the taste I had anticipated.

Visions of lovely pies and jams and cobblers danced in my head.

I ran back inside and asked my shoe size twin to trade me her runners for my sandles and bless her heart she never even asked why she just slipped off the shoes and handed them over. I put on my scrub pants. I was still wearing my cute white T-shirt but I forgot about that.

I ran back to the bush and picked berries.

I forced my way through those thorny canes. And I picked berries.

I sweated and picked berries.

One of the other doctors came out after her shift and picked berries with me.

In the heat and humidity we picked berries.

There were oodles of berries. There was oodles of sweat. My hair was plastered to my head. My pants were sticking to my legs. I was scratched and scraped. It wasn't a pretty sight.

We probably picked about 8 quarts of berries that day.

Juicy blackberries.

We talked about how we would make jam. About how we could eat them on icecream, in yogurt, on our cereal. About how we would freeze some for the winter.

I took my berries home and made my jam.