Great Grandma’s Blackberry Patch

Yesterday shopping at sprouts (the most amazing grocery store in Riverside) I picked up a couple cartons of blackberries.  Excited to eat blackberries again I got to the car and popped open the plastic container and popped one in my mouth.

I was not prepared for what happened next.  I was instantly taken back to being a kid, picking blackberries at my great grandmothers house.  Grandma Nelson was my dad’s mom’s mother, making her my grandmother and the oldest relative I ever knew.

Grandma Nelson lived on a fairly large plot of land just outside of Eugene Oregon.  I have memories of road trips up north every summer growing up, and Grandma’s was always usually our first major stop.

Grandma’s lot was next to a little wooded piece of land.  On the edge of the woods were these HUGE blackberry bushes.  If you were careful, you could pick bowls of these fresh blackberries in summer.

Grandma’s is were a lot of great memories happened. During forth of July we could set off “safe and sound” fireworks.

I broke my first swiss army knife one year trying to learn to throw it into a piece of ply wood. My brother Reuben showed me how flash photography worked in the tall grass of the field another year.

She was a strong minded woman.

Grandma was a strong woman.  I remember stories of a grandma “starting a window with an axe”  in her house because grandpa wasn’t getting around to it fast enough.
One time grandma refused to let us buy her groceries to the point that kept trying to slip cash into my dads pockets without him noticing.  She was pretty awesome.

Grandma passed away a number of years ago, as all loved ones eventually do.  I rarely make it up north anymore, and Eugene is not a stop on the trips.

I am just glad that these vivid memories are only a blackberry away.