Of Raspberries and children

This has been a crazy, busy week.  After the cherry circus of last week, the raspberries began to ripen.  They have required picking just about every day.  I have made about 35 pints of raspberry freezer jam to keep the batch of cherry jam company.  There has also been fresh raspberries with homemade caramel sauce, raspberry cake, and raspberry crisp.  And for variety--rhubarb dream bars.

In the midst of my raspberry whirl has come Vacation Bible School.  Every morning from 9:00 until noon, I have been ushering fourteen eight and nine year-olds to their various activities (somewhat like trying to herd cats...)  I was originally scheduled to assist with the pre-schoolers, but there was some staffing shortages, and I was given a group of older children.  The first day there was a certain amount of misbehavior as I learned their names.  But it seemed that as soon as I knew their names, they behaved much better...

I had thinned the apples not so long ago.  I'm convinced that they are already twice the size they were when I thinned them.  I seem to have missed a few spots; the ladder refuses to stand straight, and standing on a ladder that is tilting the wrong direction causes me some concern.  Kent was suggesting that perhaps I could get to the last of the thinning this week.  Knowing that my schedule was going to be hectic until late Friday I informed him that I didn't think there was much hope that the apples would be thinned until later.

My raspberry patch is overrun with weeds and the canes have overrun their boundaries.  I am hoping for a slight break in harvesting in order to do some major weeding and transplanting.  I also want to place a 2 x 4 border between the raspberries and the lawn to try to curtail the tendency of the raspberries to take over my lawn.