My mom was at our house from August 7 to yesterday, or in Newton from the 7th to the 10th, in Casco from the 10th to 13th, back in Newton the night of the 13th, and flew home on the 14th.
We pretty much relaxed around the house on Friday the 11th. The apples looked red enough to see if they were ripe. I picked about ten small apples (that’s all there are, small apples) from the Cortland tree. The previous weekend Arlene had noticed a stenciled sign someone had set out at the corner of Mayberry Hill Road and Heath Road advertising blackberries, $4 a quart. We had looked for them on the way home on the 6th, driving two houses down North Pine Hill Road and not seeing anything, but this time we tried harder. I looked closely at the first house along the road, the one with all the fruit-laden blackberry bushes in front of it, and saw a sign on the porch. We pulled up and didn’t see anyone. On a picnic table on the porch was a little net umbrella with one quart of blackberries and a can saying “money”. I took the berries, left four dollar bills in the can, and went on. We went on up to the Casco AG and got a gallon of gasoline for the chainsaw which I still haven’t used and some disposable aluminum pie plates. I have one 9 inch pyrex pie plate, but there were blackberries AND apples to deal with.
Charley and Nicole and Nicole’s 4-year-old daughter Emma came up on the 11th after supper but before I had time to bake blackberry and apple pies. Emma was bouncing up and down with joy and excitement about being there. Nicole had been talking up the trip all week.
O you have got to love Maine, put the money in the can and go !
How lovely. I grew up picking backberries in New Jersey before our neighborhood was completely developed. My they were good, but they are all gone now