4th of July Berries

A few years ago the Nelson family started a tradition of getting together on the morning of the 4th of July and eating waffles with freshly picked berries and going swimming in Grandma and Grandpa's pool. This picture is here for memories sake from the 4th in 2004. In the picture are my Grandpa Edwin Nelson, my dad - Roger Nelson. my uncle Paul and aunt AmyJo fixing up their plates.

Yesterday as I was packing up my kitchen I decided that I would pack away my waffle maker for 2 years (sadness - but I don't use it enough to merit bringing it with me) and was reminded of that tradition. Though we weren't going to be going to Waterloo today I decided we would still have waffles and fresh berries. The only problem was that we had eaten all the berries that we had bought at the market last night at supper so I sent Glenn over to Brian and Kristina's house because we knew that they had strawberries in their patch and were going to be away for the weekend. This is what he and Lydia came home with. They picked the black raspberries in our driveway... needless to say we didn't get many berries with our breakfast :(

Later we took a walk over to the Conservatory to see if we could check out the construction and saw some cool flowers like this orchid and the Staghorn fern mounted on the wall.









On the way home I picked some wildflowers growing around our house to put in the vase that only had dying flowers in it on our table and "the girls" (which is how Caleb and Hannah refer to Lydia and Abigail) were with me and had found rocks to add to Miss Betty's (our neighbor's) collection. We went and deposited the rocks then on the way home I was looking for more flowers and came across this berry patch by our back door. We ran in and grabbed a couple of bowls to pick berries. This is what we got - yum!! We had lots of berries with lunch!

As for the rest of our 4th I think that we are going to have good old American homemade pizza for supper (it is Friday after all) and we're going to watch the city of Rochester fireworks - probably from the top of the Highland Hospital parking garage. Happy 4th of July!