15 pounds of blackberries?

Make blobbler of course. That's cobbler in Monkey-speak. My mom made one last night and we've been feasting on it all day today. Sorry there aren't any pictures, but that would mean hooking my camera up to a scary pc. It's just too intimidating.

It's been a weird summer here, with late cold spells, so the wild blackberries are just barely. Usually we pick wild berries and call that good, but this time we went to a field and picked. It was delightful! All the vines were thornless and loaded with berries, especially around three year old height. Usually the kids get one scratch and call it quits while I pick berries for the whole crew to munch. Monkey, Mermaid, Anonymous (my mom), and myself loaded our baskets in under an hour.

And as luck would have it, the weather cooled considerably, about 20 degrees cooler. So tomorrow starts the jam jamboree. My absolute favorite is canning pie filling. Around January, a blackberry blobbler or pie sounds just right. yum. Too bad we don't have time or room for peaches this year. Peach jam. Double yum. Maybe we can make one batch.

We also headed to Wildlife Safari. As kids, we thought every town had a drive through safari park and occasionally had cheetah escapes on the news. Who knew that Winston, Oregon had one of the best cheetah breeding facilities in the world? You do, now. So as adults, Pete and I oohed and aaahed at the giraffe just outside the car, the brown bears cavorting 20 feet away, and the ria trying to see if we'd bend the rules and give it a treat. Mermaid was whining for McDonald's. Monkey was playing angel to make up for Mermaid's bad behavior. And even my mom, most patient person on the earth, was getting irritated. A little food, a trip to the uber air conditioned library (it was 105 that day) and everyone smiled again.