Team Mitchell & Crew

The next thing that comes to mind is the fact I can go to WalMart and know no-one. I mean, I could talk about colleagues and students at the top of my voice (of course I would NEVER do that) in the middle of the pickle aisle and no one would be in the peanut butter section listening to me ready to tell someone else. No one related to my working world lives over here. It's lonely, but liberating.

But last night, I discovered (actually more like remembered) one of my favorite parts about living where I live. Has nothing to do with Winchester, nothing to do with Clark County, and very little to do with my house....it's something I did. Something I planted 8 summers ago and it is now amazing!

In the summer of 2000, I was planning my wedding and moving into said house preparing to be a newlywed. I was 24, Scott was 30 and we were both ready for the on-our-own style of life. One morning before the wedding, we went down to the Farmer's Market in Lex. I remember buying some tomatoes, squash and this cute little plant, they said would grown into a thorn less blackberry bush. OK. I love blackberries. I hate thorns. Perfect fit.

I brought it home and plated my $8.99 treasure. It stood 8 inches tall and had 4 leaves.

Summer #2: I got 4 berries off that silly vine. I knew I'd wasted my money.

Summers 3-7 I would stand and eat said berries straight from the vine and make it inside with 20 or so. Just enough to fling into some cereal. Lainie would also cover herself in berry juices and she double-fisted hers into her mouth.

And here we are at Summer #8. They exploded this year. Since Scott grew up without fences in his neighborhood (something about football fields and throwing passes with friends across yards) we only have one fence in our whole yard (it's chain link and our neighbor Al put it up between around his property before we moved in), it is filling up the whole section that faces our yard. Last night, we filled up half of a galvanized bucket with ripe berries, not to mention the hundreds we left on the vine until later in the week.

Lainie and I washed the berries, made a cobbler (OMG yum!), had a berry and Cool Whip snack, sprinkled them over our cereal and covered the others with Equal until later.