Pammy, thimbleberries grow locally here in the U.P. but I've never lived anywhere else where they grow. They grow on bushes, kind of like a raspberry but the bushes have large (hand size) leaves and huge white blossoms, about an inch and a quarter in diameter. The berries are red and a little similar to a raspberry but not really. The seeds are much smaller.. very tiny. The flavor is a little raspberry like but again not really. They are sweet and much milder than a raspberry. The berries are also larger than raspberries. And they are very soft and delicate. They fall off the bush easily and they mush up easily if you fill the bucket too full. They are a highly sought after local delicacy. There are not any domestic ones, and jam makers here will pay $10 or more a pound for the wild ones (and some people here do supplement their incomes by picking wild berries). Here's a link to Wikipedia for thimbleberries: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubus_parviflorus And I'm going to put a link at the bottom to a local jam maker, lives in Eagle River, MI, just a mile from our camp. As a matter of fact, the little girl on the web page linked below, is all grown up and dating a guy my husband used to work with, and they visited our camp on the 4th of July this year :-) If you look at her products, you'll notice that some jams start as low as 6 or 7 dollars, but thimbleberry jam is 10.50 (and wild strawberry is even higher). That's because thimbleberries are so much more delicate and harder to pick and deliver in good conditions. Wild strawberry jam is expensive because wild strawberries are TINY!!! Here is a link that might be useful: The Jam Lady website

50 degrees and rainy this morning! Quite a drop for us-it was 70's yesterday. Good day to stay inside unfortunately my oldest had a soccer game at 9am this morning (in the RAIN!) I'm still cold!

Gorgeous day here, 77 a little after 1pm. I wasn't going to do anything outside, just sit out there and enjoy it; but you know how that goes. I decided to bring in the cast aluminum table and chair set from the garden and the little bistro table and chairs down in the orchard. They all fit into the storage barn like a jigsaw puzzle among the stacks of wicker chairs. Finally put my little cast iron statue that sits on a pedestal in the sunken garden away for the winter too. By the time I was through, I was out of breath and sweating. Just from that little bit of activity. The weatherman says this may be the last day of truly nice Fall weather.

I am almost snap dab in the middle of Oklahoma. The weather has been the most awesome kind for this fall. It was actually the kind of weather I would love for summer, instead of the heat that was here, when I returned here in July. Now it turned 20 degrees cooler, well, maybe only 15, but it's definitely fall here now. BURRR! and only 62 at 9 AM this Saturday, November 5. Moni who is not looking forward to the cold of winter!