Bunnies and berries

I attended a Champagne bunny show last week. I didn't show, just watched. It was very interesting. If you had a bunny in the class, you put it in one of the cubby holes and waited for the judge to look at it. She would take each one out in turn, look at it, feel it, flip it over, and then put a coin, either a penny, nickel, dime or quarter, to remind herself where she was placing the bunny. When she made up her mind about all of the bunnies, she would start at the bottom of the class, say what she liked and didn't like about it, and hand it back to its owner afterwards. Very fast. Nothing like the sheep and goat showing I did when I was a kid where I was all dressed up in my western gear, complete with boots and neck tie, flashing smiles at the judge left and right leading my animal around the pen and setting it up, etc. (The animal is always between you and the judge! Drilled into me.)

Here are a few pictures of the judge and bunnies:

Apart from bunnies and bunny shows, one of the great things about living in the midwest are the berries growing wild. Alex and I stumbled upon a berry patch (mulberries) the other night, and armed with nothing but doggy poopy bags, we did our best at the gathering part of hunting and gathering. We ended up with this at the end of the night:

Who would have thought poopy bags would come in handy for such a use?

Later on, we transformed them to this:

(syrup)

using this

and ate them like this

We totally would have made it as hunters and gatherers.

We also welcomed the first and hopefully not last raspberry of the season into our home today.

To our chagrin, it was really the long lost hat of Mr. Finger.

He got embarrassed though and gave it up with a little coercion.

Yum yum.

The end.