HOW much?

It's a bumper berry crop this year.

Earlier in the week, Mamma took the Boy hunting for blackberries alongside the train tracks, close to the community swimming pool. It's not peak season yet; most of the berries still have to ripen. There are thousands and thousands of them this year. And even only picking the early arrivals, Mamma and the Boy came home with a healthy-sized harvest.

It was another beautiful weekend this weekend. Sunny and warm. I resolved less TV/internet/PlayStation; more outdoors. I told Mamma that the plan for Saturday was to go swimming after we went berry picking. She warned me that they had already got all of the ripe ones and that there probably weren't a lot more ready to be picked. She was wrong.

The next morning before going to work, she asked the Boy how the berry-picking went.

Mamma: Did you find a lot of blackberries?

Boy: Only quite a very many few.