Esquire Coffinberry's Great-Grand-Niece

The abundant rain last weekend resulted in prolific raspberries in my backyard bramble. Son Three sat in front of the bush yesterday like a medium-sized grizzly bear, popping berries with both hands. The whole neighborhood-ful of kids have been grazing like starved gazelles. And yet there was still a gallon of berries. Which, this afternoon, became 12 pints of jam. Two batches of straight unadulterated raspberry. And the third batch, because there wasn't quite enough raspberries for another go-round, to which I added the left-over half-bag of frozen mixed blueberries/strawberries/blackberries from the freezer, a quickly sliced-up nectarine from the fruit bowl, and a cup of orange juice out of the fridge to fill in the spaces between. That batch just came out of the canner, a deep purple and delicious.

Unlike last summer, there are now 5 little girls ages 7-9 that live nearby. Yesterday, unplanned, all five converged at our house for the afternoon. They played Twister, House, Barbies, and School - all in a forty-five minute span. They played in the sandbox and swung on the swings and roamed the house playing hide-and-seek and sardines. They devoured three-quarters gallon of cranberry-apple juice (unpolitely called "crapple juice" by my teen sons), two pounds of cherries left-over from the fourth, all the ripe raspberries from the bush in the back yard, and then several asked to stay for supper, which was black-bean chili, in which the tomato chunks proved to be too much to swallow, but the bag of doritos and the cheese was quickly consumed. Giggles, shrieking, running, chasing. A noisy day at the Coffinberry place.

Yes, we got our usual spot. 5pm, Roger's Grove, snug up against the do-not-cross tape. (Telling people "this is the end; you can go no further" loses none of its appeal over the years). Veggies (broccoli, jicama, tomatoes, peas, carrots, celery, cucumbers) and dip, lots of cheese, crackers, three kinds of chips (Sun Chips, Doritos, and those wonderful veggie chips -- mmm, sweet potato chips), Oreos, and a chocolate birthday cake with chocolate chip frosting. A long, leisurely game of Apples-to-Apples (did you ever pretend that the cards you win say something about yourself? My husband's cards said "normal" and "ancient" - poor sweetie! - but mine said "sexy," "sensual," and "boisterous." Ha!). We had just sent the little ones off to play in the cattails, and had started a very loud game of Pit among the 9 adults, when we looked up at the sky... all previous rain clouds had tracked to the south and west of us, but this ...