Apple & Blackberry Picking

Our friends live in Frankfort Illinois, and have a couple of GLORIOUS acres...On these acres they have pears, apples, blackberries, raspberries, strawberries & grapes...as well as the occasional traveling otter family, deer, raccoons, a pond etc...
I had to laugh as I was planning this post - because when I typed "blackberry" into my browser bar, the first seventeen or so entries were for the electronic type!
Here is what Wikipedia has to say about the original blackberries
This paragraph is my favorite: "As there is forensic evidence from the Iron Age Haraldskær Woman that she consumed blackberries some 2500 years ago, it is reasonable to conclude that blackberries have been eaten by humans over thousands of years."


We were invited out to pick blackberries & apples last week - it was a really steamy day, but we collected quite a bounty! Can't wait to go back soon & gather more delicious food...Thanks B family!!!

 

 

 

 

Caterpillar in the Dill

Found this little creature on my dill...My niece has since adopted it (the caterpillar, not the dill) and it's seemingly living happily in a container with fresh mint and dill and lettuce to consume & create lots of caterpillar poop with! It is a black swallowtail (one of their favorite foods is dill!). Lots of informative info here on Illinois caterpillars! You can see a photo of what this caterpillar looks like after metomorphosis here

A tiny toad

I found this little gal/fellow in my marigolds today while I was weeding...The smallest one I have ever seen! We held him for a few minutes and then set him back where he'd been spotted...I hope the lack of good weeds to hide in didn't ruin the little critter's day!
I also found this site where you can learn how to build little toad homes in your garden! It says "if you build it, they will come..."
There is also this lesson plan for building a "toad abode"...
And then there is some helpful and fun information about toads!

Summer So Far...

Hazel's latest creation

A medium sized box, masking tape and aluminum foil...makes a great baby doll crib!

Perhaps we have a furniture designer on our hands?

Engineer?

I know she's my kid, but I think this is pretty cool...no parental involvement - her own design/ingenuity!

Summertime!

Steelmen 5K at Joliet Speedway

Last year upon turning 37 , I decided I'd take up running! Now...even a year later, "running" is a very wiggly term for what I actually manage to do. It's more of a shuffling jog I suppose, but as a person who always said "I only run if someone is chasing my #$$ with a weapon"...it's running! I took the majority of this past winter off (the treadmill in the living room had occasional punishment from me, but sporadic at best) and as spring approached I decided to register for a race or two to give my self something to run for. June 1 I ran this excellent race at the Chicagoland Speedway - the Steelmen 5K - put on by students at Joliet Central & Joliet West High Schools' Business Academy students. It was really neat to run ON the track & pretend to be Lightening McQueen or something (Danica Patrick? uh...not even going to go there!)

Hotter than Hades but I did manage to run (shuffle-jog) the whole 3.1 miles in just under 40 minutes, which for me (the little boy called me "the tortoise" as I crossed the finish line!) was good, considering my winter of no training & my general shuffle-jog styling!

Here I am sweatily and oh-so-gracefully crossing the finish line just under 40 minutes...It was SO HOT on the track, even the mesh baseball cap I had on proved to hold in too much heat on my melon - so I carried it the last mile or so.

Victory is mine!

With my cheering section & support staff (even though he called me a tortoise)

The boy watching the awards go out.