Life lessons in the blackberry patch

The last few days have been spent in the sleepy little town of Boston. Georgia, that is, not the Bean Town one. When I tell people , with my sweet southern drawl, that I was born and raised in Boston, I always get the same look. A puzzled look until I explain that it is in South Georgia. I used to think that growing up in a small town, and even worse, on a farm in a small town was so "small"!! Nothing to do , nowhere to go, not even that many people to stir up good gossip(although my Grandma Girlie and her sisters, Eva and Nellie, could burn a hole in that party line telephone!) I couldn't wait to move to the big city. I had no idea what the big city was but I was going to find it! So, here I sit in the even smaller town of Sasser, Ga some 40 odd years later thinking about the fun that we had these last few days on those old familiar dirt roads. Nowhere to go, nothing really important to do, and nobody to stir up a whole lot of gossip! We got up with the sun and watched it rise over a cotton field, we took a walk down a canopied dirt road, and we picked blackberries. My Lindsey and I love to pick blackberries. Not the hybrid thorn-less kind but the good ole prickly kind that taste so yummy. We discovered that there can be a lot of conversation that happens while you are searching for the perfect berry. Finding that perfect berry can be tricky too. Sometimes you have to sort through a lot of buggy and mushy berries before you find the one that is just right. There are also a whole bunch of stickers that you have to wade through to get to those plump black berries. The more stickers you encounter, the better you get at learning to avoid the stickers. And one of the most frustrating lessons is when you think that you have just picked the perfect berry and then, dang it, you DROP it! But, guess what, there is always another perfect berry right around the next bush. When your buckets are full and the sun is starting to set ,you can set out for home and enjoy the fruits of your labor. Our buckets were full; we made and ate 3 whole cobblers; and we are all the richer for our time spent on a dirt road in a small town in the middle of nowhere with the people that we love dearly. I hope that everyone can find their own berry patch and it tastes as good as ours did! Till tomorrow....