We buy really expensive blackberries

Here’s a look at some of the blackberries that we just agreed to buy for more money than you'd believe, along with impressive quantities of poison oak. We couldn’t pass up an opportunity to purchase the five-acre lot next to us when Mary, the owner, offered to sell it. We had a nice visit with Mary and her sister this afternoon and worked out an amicable deal that was sealed with a handshake.

Crafty real estate wheeler-dealers that we are, naturally we had never walked over quite a bit of the property that we agreed to buy. And we only had a rough idea of where the lot lines are. Details, details.

As soon as Mary and her sister had left, and Laurel and I got over the initial “Oh my god what have we done??!!” tremors, we put on our trusty blackberry-tough boots and long-sleeved poison-oak protecting shirts and set out to survey what hopefully soon will be our five acre addition.

Here’s Laurel standing on what would have been the most likely homesite. Pretty flat and open, and a nice view if the gorgeous stand of fir trees in the background was cut down. Which it will never be so long as we own the property, for we’ll be leaving it natural.

There is much that is emotional about buying real estate. Maybe because it is so, well, real. You can do all the comparative sales analyzing you want, but eventually the decision to make that handshake or not comes down to gut feelings.

I love this part of Spring Creek that is just off our current lot, especially when the creek is running strongly in May and wildflowers are blooming. How do you put a price on something priceless?

You can, however, put a price on something that isn’t priceless. So we’ll be entertaining offers from blackberry and poison oak fanciers. You won’t find any healthier stock in the mid-Willamette Valley than we have right next door. So make plans to come on over and do some transplanting for an exceedingly fair price.

No reasonable offer refused. Who knows? We’re so eager to deal that we might even pay you to take our blackberries and poison oak away.