There are these blackberries outside my window, wrapped around George, the giant aloe vera (wait, it’s not a metaphor, I swear) that are the sweetest damn things I’ve ever tasted. They’re like magic. I can’t seem to pick a bad one. Even the ones that have cobwebs on them don’t bother me. They’re best warm from the sun (like tomatoes). I think I ate one with a bug in it yesterday, and I didn’t even care. Just kept chewing.
They’re not mine, actually. They belong to the house next door. Their yard is almost my yard since they don’t have a fence up yet. When talking to the neighbor one afternoon (why won’t his name stay in my head?), I asked if it was okay that I steal some berries from time to time (read: every morning when I get home from work). He said sure, that they weren’t very good anyway. Then I made the classic mistake by telling him the truth: “NO, they’re INSANELY good.” He tried one, and agreed. Darn it. Now he knows, and there are fewer berries for me.
In my future, way down the road, when I get settled, when I move into a place where I can put things right into the ground without thought of transplant, I’m planting blackberry vines. I know they’re a noxious weed, but I have to have ’em. That and a sheep.
I don’t have much weekend coming up — I have to work Saturday night, and the rest of the weekend is filled with to-dos (including one fun one: going to The Producers on Sunday). I need to spend some time working on my dang computer. (I realized I spent 18 hours yesterday looking at computer screens — 12 at work, 6 at home dealing with the crash and subsequent discovery of the spyware nest.) You’ve all given me fabulous suggestions of downloads, so I’ll add a few more and work on killing those bugs. Such a major pain. Clear your cookies, folks. And eat some, too.
I defragged last night and ate deleted cookies this morning. I don’t think it’s that much faster. Love the blackberry/sheep dream. I desperately wanted a sheep in MA…but our yard was too small. Distracted typo–I had written our yarn was too short. Must eat more cookies.
Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo! Don’t plant blackberry vines!!!! “Noxious” is the greatest understatement in the history of mankind. They literally grow 15, 20, 30 feet a season, cannot be killed and, if they get away from you, they will smother every other plant they touch. Here in Washington, we have a raging problem with blackberry vines. They literally, again, smother acres and acres of land, leaving no other plants alive in their wake. (Can you tell I hate blackberry vines? In fact you’ve inspired me to go home and whack down the few that still insist on growing on my property…)
How ’bout raspberry vines? TMK grows some in her yard and, although I don’t like raspberries, she swears hers are very yummy.
I had a similar pop-up problem to yours about a month ago — only in my case, my browser home page was hijacked also. I did everything you are doing to try to fix it, but the only thing that worked was using system restore from the control panel of my PC (windows) and resetting the system to a day or two before the pop-ups and hijacking began.
I second the vote for firefox, by the way. And you can actually set it to allow pop-ups on specific sites if they are essential to the operation and use of that site…
Good luck!
We are inundated with blackberries – volunteers, and extremely delicious – and they are trying to take over our roses and they DO grow insanely each year. The only reason I left them in, seriously, is Owen’s request to leave them. I made him promise we’d get them under control before he leaves for Germany.
Won’t the sheep keep the blackberries a little bit too under control? At least you’ll have pre-dyed wool…
LOL at Jons comment. Mmm, purple wool. Rachael, sweetie…bless your heart,your dream is sweet. But blackberries are taking over my universe and the sheep can barely keep up. Plus my poor sheepies are being picked off one by one by a mountain lion! I inadvertently invited the big kitty to dinner. So maybe put your vines in a pot and put some twigs for “legs” in the bottom of a big poof of wool and pretend it’s a sheep.Oh, and what about George!?! Don’t let the poor thing suffocate.
Blackberries grow on vines? Then what the heck is growing on the gigantor tree in front of my building? The squirrels are always pelting me with berries.
See, if you moved to Brooklyn you could have sheep. Hey, a guy kept a tiger in his apt. for ages. We kinda shrug these things off around here.
You know, you could have a lawn sheep now.
http://www.virtualvermont.com/fool/sheep.html
Yum!!!!!!!!!!! Those blackberries sound good. We have a ton of cucumbers and tomatoes. every day we get about 100 of each. I sick of them already.
I’m Baaaaaack! Love that Brick Joy, and oh my those chair legs…wooohooo, gotta go get my ZZTop shades for those….
mwah!
There were blackberries growing in the vacant lot next to my grade school, and we would just swarm all over them during recess in the late spring. I can still remember EXACTLY how they tasted.
You might also want to run a random virus scan once a week from Trend Micro (http://housecall.trendmicro.com/housecall/start_corp.asp), even if you have a virus-blocker already installed. VERY highly recommended by my connection at Microsoft.
Iris: If they’re on a tree, they’re probably mullberries. We grew up with a mulberry tree by the house; it always dropped thousands of berries which got all over everything.
Jon beat me to the blackberry/sheep joke. Ah, well. I had no idea blackberries were so Napoleanesque (get it, like they invade things? Feh, it’s early). Because they’re so tasty! Eh, I’m so stubborn I’d just go ahead and plant them, anyway. And then everyone who warned me could say “I told you so,” and order would be restored.
We have black berries growing outside in the lane near our house.. Delicious! Hey, if the sheep thing never happens you could always get an angora like this country bumpkin transplanted farm girl has in the city 🙂 No idea on how the cats would react though..