It seems like everyone we up here know has something exciting growing in their year except us. I mentioned the other day that our neighbors let the boys pick all the raspberries they want and we have certainly raided the Hyden's raspberry plants more than once. Turns out another one of our friends has a ton of raspberry plants and they invited several of us over to pick berries. Given raspberries are probably my favorite fruit, how could we turn down the invite??
Eric is one of Matt's coworkers, so of course Abby was on the invite list too. I think Abby and Thomas spent the entire get-together in the raspberry bushes. I'm not sure what extent was picking versus eating - neither one of their buckets was terribly full compared to how many berries I saw them grabbing...
They were pretty excited about the amount of raspberry plants and so many tasty berries! I think Thomas finally got the hang of the appropriate color, he didn't ask me "is this red enough???" before picking every single one. Yay!
There was also a lone strawberry plant that got attacked. It didn't have nearly the number of berries, but it was quite possibly one of the best strawberries I've had in a long time. Why does homegrown fruit taste so much better than in the store?
This was his haul when I finally took his bucket away. I spent a good amount of time picking berries with him because I wanted to have enough for our favorite raspberry tart I haven't made in ages. And the bucket kept losing volume after each of my additions!
I finally began to get worried there was such a thing as eating too many raspberries! So after he nicely posed for a photo with all of his berries, I took the bucket away. In case you can't tell - he has a mouthful of them at the moment.
I thought a zoomed in photo of the juicy berries would be a nice addition to the day:
Except as soon as I tried to take the photo, this little hand snuck in and grabbed more! This kid is a raspberry addict. Well, I suppose it's genetic so I can't say too much. I finally put the bucket on the table out of reach and told him the rest were mine. I think it should be enough for the tart - fingers crossed! :)
And Henry is missing from all of the photos because he was home with my parents. They just flew in for a visit yesterday and I felt bad taking off with the whole family and leaving them at home. So Henry got some alone time with his Nonni and Grandpa and we got enough raspberries to share (hopefully). Win-win!