The color purple and out of breath

My fingers and lips are purple and I'm out of breath. So naturally I need to blog about it.

I've just completed my workout which explains the out of breath part. My workout consists of going from the house to the mailbox and back. Sounds easy but the two are separated by about 1/3 mile in distance and 200 feet in elevation. Plus it's warm and humid. If I feel good I try to get in a couple of brief uphill sprints. My goal is to get to the point that I can run the entire distance uphill in one go.

OK, now for the purple part. There are a lot of wild blackberries along my workout route, and some berries are now perfectly ripe. So on the way down the driveway I pick and eat a few blackberries. When the blackberries are just right they are plump, juicy, and require just a slight tug to release them from their vine. Ripe blackberries will just about melt in your mouth and are delicious. The juice is what causes the purple lips and fingers.

Debby gets tired of how much I talk about the blackberries, but I really do enjoy them. I'm trying to figure out the best method to manage them, the wild ones put up canes in their first year and bear fruit in the second. And they have a bunch of thorns also. So, all the blackberry spots that were mowed last fall through this spring now have first year plants. If I don't mow these areas we will have a large blackberry crop next year. I'm thinking about how to rotate areas to get a good crop every year. I think a few blackberry trails would be a lot of fun, what do you think?