Garden Hoarding

September Writing Challenge - Prompt #18:

Tradition

A few things I really enjoy about late August/early September:

• School starts
• It cools down a little
• It's raspberry season

My mother-in-law has a bit of a "garden hoarding" problem. She can't turn any plants away!

The other day I went to her house to get a tomato for my lunch. She met me outside and was in a panic because she didn't have "very many" ripe tomatoes. She was so worried I wouldn't have enough tomatoes for my lunch. 

I needed one.

She had at least 50 ready to pick.

One aspect of her garden hoarding is her gigantic crop of raspberries. She has hundreds of raspberry plants. She never uses her raspberries, but she also won't pull them out. Because, like I said, she can't turn any plants away! 

So every year, when the the raspberries are ripe, we go up to my mother-in-law's house about every 3-5 days and pick them. This is our end of summer tradition - raspberry harvesting.

We usually just freeze them and use them in smoothies, shakes, and baked oatmeal. Sometimes we'll put them on pancakes or make a raspberry dessert. 

During raspberry season, I have stained fingers and stained toes. 

My legs are covered in scratches because I'm always too hot to wear pants, even though they are the practical berry picking choice. 

So, as you can imagine, we've been quite busy with raspberries these past couple of weeks. Between stress baking and raspberry picking, my freezer is full to the brim!

(Now, don't even get me started on my mother-in-law's grape problem!)