I was adding the finishing touches to dinner when I heard the back door slam and an excited voice.

“Close your eyes! I have a big SURPRISE, Mama!”

I shut my eyes and turned around with a big grin on my face anxious to see what the surprise was.

“Okay, open them,” the little voice said.

And there with an outstretched open hand was Theodore holding a handful of wild blackberries.

“Taste them they are so sweet, “ he said.

“Mama, I found us a honey hole!”

He asked if I would follow him so we could pick more wild blackberries. I put dinner on hold and off Henry, Theodore, and I went into the woods to find the bounty.

It was a little hike through the woods on a beautiful path that Blake keeps trimmed for us. The trees canopied us as we walked.

When we arrived, we remembered that the tiny wild blackberries have thorns and are sometimes hard to reach, but we didn’t let that stop us.

We talked about what we might make with the blackberries if we didn’t eat them all. I retold a favorite summer classic called, Blueberries for Sal, except I changed the story to be about blackberries. After much debate, we settled on blackberry cobbler for the Fourth of July!

Blackberries aren’t the only thing we brought home that unseasonably cool July 3rd.

As I got ready for bed I saw spots on me. So many spots I thought maybe I had the measles. I began counting and gave up around 150 bites.

And to think our “HONEY HOLE” was also a “HOLE” filled with chiggers!!

Not to mention that we have vine after vine filled with thornless blackberries in our own garden that AREN’T laden with chiggers.

A Fourth of July to Remember and a post I can hardly finish writing for the scratching!