BORN AND BRED IN THE BRIAR PATCH


     I love eating raspberries!   But they are as costly as gold--except the price of gold goes down occasionally!   It is definitely cheaper to grow your own raspberries, but be forewarned!   Picking them can be dangerous to your health!   Only a true raspberry connoisseur is willing to risk life and limb navigating through thorns and creepy crawlies to delve into the nether reaches of a raspberry patch for one of those succulent red gems hanging from a distant stem. 

     Raspberries try to hide but as a practiced persistent picker, I can spot them!   Sometimes it requires teetering tiptoe on the edge of my garden box one leg in the air, one hand gripping an unsteady cross wire while the other is reaching for the prized fruit.   Hanging in this precarious position it is not difficult to imagine myself toppling headlong into the thicket never to be found again!   But, oh, the ecstasy!   If the Lord of the Manor wonders why his breakfast isn't forthcoming, he just might brave the brambles only to discover his scratched and battered wife sprawled out punch drunk under a tangle of briers, raspberry juice dribbling down her chin and having a bit more trouble than Brer Rabbit "skipping away as merry as a cricket!"  And he may hear a slurred murmur of contentment coming from under the brush:   "Aw, just come back when berry season is over." (hic!)