1 = 2

Today, being a Wednesday, deemed it a "creek s'ploring and berry gathering day" so Conker and I headed off to the creek beside the dog park. Which was undergoing some sort of construction, so the fence was all screwed up in several places.

Anywho...
We s'plored the same section of the creek we did the other day. The blackberry bushes were starting to droop with the ripening fruit that we'd gone down there to gather. I took the soft-sided lunch cooler Freshpet sent me back in March to use as a berry container. I stuck a hard plastic thing that came with a different lunch cooler (don't know where it is) that I normally use to store my expensive Copic art markers in so that the soft berries wouldn't be squished all over the inside of the cooler.

We started by harvesting the ripe berries from around the entrance to the tunnel. These bushes were dripping with large black berries, though none are easily visible in the picture.

Conker helped a little by clearing the grass away from a section of bushes. I did not get a picture of him doing this, but it was really cute.

This is the spot where I fell the other day. That chunk of wood jutting out on the left used to be twice as long, but is now lopped in half due to my stupidity. The water below it is about 4 feet deep but only 2 1/2 feet wide. Conker and I went around it this time.

It was about 90 degrees today, which is right around Conker's cut off point where he will not have any fun. Down in the creek it was much cooler, and the water helped with keeping Conker and I comfortable. All the shade the trees hanging over the creek made also helps with lowering the temperature.

Often, while I was foraging for berries, Conker would grow impatient and start to bark at me. He wanted to continue to explore, but I was busy collecting berries. So I'd toss one behind him and he'd run off to go find it.

This is the same vine I took a picture of a couple days ago.  When you compare the two side-by-side, you can see some of the berries are missing, and others are still growing.

This large berry was almost 1 1/2 inches! Not the biggest I harvested today, but a nice large one compared to what we normally get in the stores around here. This berry was particularly delicious.

First thing I did when we got home was wash and weigh the berries. I harvested a total of just over 2 pounds of wild blackberries! Not bad for only 1 hour of indiscriminatory berry picking. The first haul of the summer sure was a delicious one.
And that is how 1 = 2.