Lovely Saturday

It is so perfect outside. It's in the low '70s and sunny. Gorgeous day. I'm glad Lance and I aren't letting it go to waste.

We took Reece to Petco this morning to get a nail trim. We followed that up with a visit to Lake Meridian Park. Lance wanted to see Reece go in the water, which she did. She probably would've wandered out further if she hadn't been on the leash. He let her play around in the lake for a bit and then we walked around the park for a little while.

We took her home and then headed out to South Hill Mall in Puyallup. They announced on the news this morning that there was a computer parts and equipment recycling drive out there today, and Lance had a monitor to get rid of. So we took that out there and got rid of it. We walked around the mall, mostly to find the Sears and check the prices on their shop vacs. Then we stopped at Borders, ate lunch at Subway (Lance decided to have a cheat meal today), and then started to head toward home. Only Lance decided he wanted to go to Federal Way and check out Trader Joe's first (OMG...I kept typing this as "Trader Hoe's"...HAHAHAHAHA).

So anyway, we went there. I immediately started filling up the basket. Smoked salmon. Sweet apple chicken sausages. Dried apricots. Two big bags of unsalted cashews (Lance's new favorite snack). Strawberry multigrain bars.

I walked out a happy girl. I didn't even look at the nutrition label for the sausage. In my excitement, I just chucked them in the basket. But I was pleased to see that they're lowfat and already cooked, so we can toss them on the grill and they're ready in less than 10 minutes. Awesome.

We came home after that. Lance played frisbee with Reece in the backyard for a bit. I picked some more blackberries.

Lance is getting ready to run to Home Depot and find a machete so he can go back and whack the crap out of the blackberry vines. We have one that has now wound itself into one of our rhodedendrons, probably will choke the life out of it. We have a couple of new blackberry brambles sprouting up in the backyard...probably from seeds that were dropped last year. This is ridiculous.

I started on laundry and I have some other household drudgery to attend to today. But I definitely want to eat out on the patio tonight and continue to enjoy this fabulous weather.

Blackberries, anyone?

This is how bad the blackberries have gotten in less than a year...so bad, that Lance could open up the back gate last September and walk back through the wooded area behind our yard...now, forget about it. Huge nasty prickly vines everywhere.

We now have a machete. Twenty-two inches of cold, razor-sharp steel. And a bottle of herbicide made specifically for blackberry plants.

Even though I wanted Lance to wait until the berries were out of season, he insisted on doing it now. He let me pick what I could get first. I just couldn't get very far. It's madness back there, I tell you!

I took before pictures. I'll take more pictures after the plants start to die and he starts hacking away at them with the machete. That will be sometime next month. So...I better enjoy my tiny blackberry harvest because it's the only one I'm going to get. Thankfully, I'm not a huge fan of them. I much prefer raspberries and blueberries.

And to think, this is one of those things that native Pacific Northwesterners love...all the wild blackberries. I don't find them so charming when the brambles snake their way through the fence and start taking over the yard.

Now that "Operation KILL TEH EVIL!" is in full effect, we won't be starting Johnson's Blackberry Jam Factory.

Keep in mind with these pictures, there ARE trees back there...somewhere.

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