I Think I Will Have Dessert!

How many times do you finish a good meal and the server or host/hostess would ask, "would you like some dessert?"

Whether it is a family dinner, date, church or community social there seems to always be plenty of desserts on hand. There is cake, pie, candy, brownies, and fresh fruit. We like the sweet things in life.

Fresh fruit seems to be one of those things that we can not wait til summer for. I can remember as a kid growing up on the farm in Illinois and my father and I would go out to the "40 acre" wood and he would show me all kinds of things to be found there.

There was asparagus, mushrooms, and the glorious beautiful ripe blackberries! Unlike the asparagus and mushrooms the blackberries could be picked and consumed right off the vine. But beware!!! Beware there were briars and stickers and they were not easy to claim but oh so sweet when you popped one into your mouth.

I think we would eat more than we claimed and placed into our buckets???

Once picked we would take them back to the house, gently rinse them, and we could do many different things with them: Freeze for later use, bake a blackberry cobbler, blackberry pie, blackberry wine, and blackberry jam.

But my favorite was once they were washed to place a lil' sugar on them let them rest on the kitchen counter and produce juice. Then after dinner get out the the ice cream freezer (if we were lucky) or go to the 'fridge and get the store bought ice cream out and serve heaping bowls of ice cream smothered in those beautiful sweet delicious berries....

Seems life is like that...

As a person we head out into the wild woods (world) and like '40 acres' to a young kid it seems pretty large. There are many things there to find: adventures, rabbits, pheasants, trees to climb, creeks to play in, hills to climb, turtles, and snakes!

There was treasure to be found, countries to conquer, food to be foraged, and there were the briars, thorns, & stickers and how they hurt while trying to achieve the act of capturing the sweet berries. They would get you every time but you had to suffer them to get the fruit of your labors!

As a young man I set out to conquer the world, explore my surroundings and find my sweet sweet berries. Of course there were the briars, thorns, & stickers....

I have encountered my far share of the rough briar patch in this life... But, I will continue on in this place, my '40 acre' wood, continue looking for the berries, fruit, the sweet sweet beautiful berries!

Cause, I want dessert!