Azithromycin...

...is my new friend! I've never met Azith before, but after two pills last night, and another today, I believe in it! Oh! I'm finally starting to feel better, not worse...and if I could, I would give a big hug and a kiss on the cheek to the person or persons who discovered antibiotics. They changed the world -- and my world this week...so thankful! I hate to contemplate the olden days where you had to fight the long fight against disease without much to help...We complain about healthcare all the time, but really, we have so much to be thankful for.

Now -- if we could just find an antibiotic for rain...

Our on again, off again spring is yielding its usual result in the ripening of the berries... The top of our bushes are starting to look like this:

...while the body of the bushes, down to the ground, look like this:

By the time the bottom of the bush has enough ripe fruit on it, we will have lost a fair bit of the ripe ones up top. This is a result of cooler weather during bloom time. The blooms open slowly, and sporadically as the plant and the bees prefer the presence of sun and heat. Consequently, the ripening occurs slowly and sporadically, paralleling what happened during bloom time.

One would think that you could just start up the picker and go clean off those early beauties that are hanging out there, but it's not that simple.

First of all, it costs money to run the picker down the row, so you need to be pulling off enough fruit to make it worthwhile. Secondly, and probably more importantly, every time you take the machine through the row, you are causing a little bit of damage to the new canes growing up for next year's crop. You want to keep that cost in balance with what you are gaining, so most likely, we'll see a lot of these berries on the ground.

Unless you want to come pick some for your breakfast bowl...Call me.

Anyway, it also makes it challenging to decide when to start picking. Earlier, we were sure we would be waiting until after the 4th, but now we're wondering...And wondering means, how will we get all our pre-harvest meetings and prep done, and if we start will we really have enough fruit to make it worthwhile to run the processing plant? Like the picker, it costs money to run the plant, so you have to run enough stuff to make it worthwhile.

So that's the kind of stuff that is going through the minds of The Farmer and His Wife this week...Well, mostly The Farmer's mind, as mine has been distracted of thoughts regarding whether my teeth might just fall out from sinus pressure, and whether I will indeed stop coughing some day.

Did I tell you how much I love azithromycin?

Today, the sun is shining so we are going to enjoy it. The rows will be humming with bees visiting the blooms that will be popping open...Go bees and blooms go!

I'm going to go sit in the chair and watch them...