The Blackberry Patch

Bug spray?  Check.
Long sleeved shirt?  Check.
Machete?  Check.

And off I went.  No, I wasn't reenacting the jungle chase scene from Romancing the Stone.  But I was headed into some wild territory--the wild blackberry patch at the edge of the field.  What better way to spend a sultry summer evening when the husband's away?  Don't answer that...but be prepared for some selfies.

Here's me at the start of the patch, which is really just a huge mass of overgrown brambles with berry-loaded canes dotted throughout.  The best berries are always found at the center of the patch, and that's where the machete comes in...

...because this is what happens if I try to push my way through the thorny briars without hacking out a path.  Believe me, it's impossible to get through a wild blackberry patch without getting tangled up in the briars.  Sometimes I wonder if they don't purposely reach out and grab me...

Just to get back at me for all the nibbles I take along the way.  But they're just so sweet and tasty, nobody could resist them.

Okay, Esther can.  She came along with me on the walk to the patch, but she was absolutely not one bit interested in going in it.  Look how happy she is just sitting in the field...

...and look how sweaty I am deep inside the jungle.  It's so dense and thick in there, there's not a bit of air circulating.  And when it's mid-July and 97 degrees in the shade, I sweat.  So do you.

You won't believe what I found when I finally hacked my way out of the patch--a decades old wrecked cargo plane with a skeleton in the pilot's seat!  Wait, my mistake.  It's just my old barn.  But I still felt like Joan Wilder--dripping wet, slinging my machete through the tangled vegetation, suddenly uncovering a long forgotten relic.  But she had Micheal Douglas with her...

And I had somebody even better.  Even if he was due for a bath!