Rosemary Kirstein

About halfway through the days of solitude.  Plugging away at plugging away, so to speak.  I do wish this thing would just take wing and soar!  It still could — but certainly won’t if I don’t keep at it.

Meanwhile, Sleeping Giant State Park has re-opened!  Oh, hurrah, I was getting tired of the very-busy local Linear Trail.  Too many people; same terrain over and over.

There are 9 or 10 different trailheads in this little park, and on my first hike there in a year, I found one with zero people sharing it!

The tornado damage has been converted from downed trees to stacks of logs and brush by the side of the trails.  There are some places previously dark and moody where now sunshine rules.

The rank after rank after rank of mountain laurels previously crowding this section of the yellow trail have been reduced to mere clumps instead, but still lovely.

And right after this it rained for three days straight, so — I’ll have to wait a bit to get back.  Maybe Wednesday.

In other news: I’ve been tending my sister’s flowers and was supposed to dead-head her fuchsia plant, so it wouldn’t waste its energy actually reproducing.

Apparently I missed a few, because I found a couple of these:

Not actually a seed-pod…

It’s bright red, and remarkably fruit-like…

Yep, it’s a berry.

Apparently, so the Internet tells me with great enthusiasm, fuchsia berries exist.  Edible, and good for jams, jellies, etc.  The main problem is getting enough of ’em to make it worthwhile.

Edible, you say? And I’m a big fan of all sorts of berries.  So of course I ate a couple.

They tasted… okay.  Not a strong flavor, and not very sweet either.  Sort of an extremely anemic blackberry.

But still, that they exist is a delightful thing I never knew before.  Berries, happening right on my back porch.