Berry Season!

Best. Season. Ever.
     Today, I had the pleasure of spending my morning at my research site.  This meant I got to spend my morning on the prairie with a good friend and coworker whose research shares the same site as mine!  Everything is in bloom right now and, as I have been away for the past week, I needed to get back out there and take pictures demonstrating different aspects of my research for reports, presentations, and, of course, my thesis.  Dry as that sounds, what basically happened is that I took pictures of flowers.
    Side benefit of our scientific exploits is that our site is surrounded by thickets that are FILLED with raspberries!  We took full advantage of that.  In the name of science.
     Now, I am a student at the University of Northern Iowa.  We happen to have a lovely biological preserves system (Check it out sometime!  It is full of trails!).  It is also filled with apple and cherry trees and wild berries of all kinds and probably all sorts of other things that I have not eaten yet.  This is where I went after work to get the berries pictured here.
     Someone had beaten me to them.
     My former boss from my undergrad days came wandering off the trails with bowls of raspberries destined to become jam.  However, he left berries enough for me, other wanderers, and all the woodland creatures who wanted some.
     I wish I had taken my camera onto the trail.  Shafts of sunlight came through and hit the ripe berries making them shine.  Also shining were the ebony jewelwing damselflies (I had to look them up.  You should too!  They are beautiful!) that were flitting around everywhere.  I waded around in the thorny bushes filling the container used to store the peanut butter sandwich I had for lunch with the dark shiny berries, getting scolded by an irate catbird, and gradually staining my fingers purple.  It was amazing.
     To make a long story short, I took my foraged treasures home with me and after supper (Maple salmon, little red potatoes, peas, and a tall glass of milk!) made a bit of homemade whipped cream and globbed it on to my berries.  I ate them while I wrote this post.  My stomach is full to bursting and I am immensely happy.
     Also, here is a picture of me in my "office" today.  The flowers you're looking at are Ox-eye sunflower (Heliopsis helianthoides).  The prairie is already much taller than me in a few places.  Soon I will get lost in it. :)