Here at home, in the Willamette Valley of Oregon, nothing grows wild better then blackberries. The mild wet winters, the cool damp springs with a sudden dry heat setting on in late in the summer, provide an ideal habitat for them to flourish. And so commonly, at this time of the year, you’ll find cars parked along the road sides and see their occupants out picking blackberries alongside the road. The harvest is so abundant that it isn’t uncommon to be able to pick several gallons in as little as 30 to 45 minutes.
And there’s hardly anything better than a fresh blackberry pie or cobbler to warm one’s heart. I still remember sitting down to dinner with sweetened blackberry juice as the special treat of the night. That was prior to the time when you could conveniently just go pick up some frozen concentrate or packaged juice at the local grocery.
But all the same, blackberries do have their drawbacks. First of all they will take over your landscape before you hardly know you have a blackberry problem if you’re not careful. For example: When we purchased our current home the previous owners had told us it was an “organic gardener’s delight.” What that meant was that nearly 1/3 of our property was covered with blackberries so densely overgrown that a full grown man couldn’t walk through them. Skunks, opossums, raccoons and other varmints certainly can though and that’s what makes it so difficult to raise small animals like chickens, rabbits or even small dogs near blackberries jungles. Those wild creatures always get the upper hand on smaller domesticated animals. How many of you have ever had your dog sprayed by a skunk? Not a sweet aroma to deal with.
Now besides becoming an overgrown brush problem here in Oregon, blackberries also have a very nasty habit of growing vicious thorns which protect the delicious fruit that is so wonderful once it is harvested. Notice I said once it is harvested? That is because nobody can pick blackberries for more than a few seconds without being introduced properly to those nasty thorns. And it’s never a very kind introduction because they hurt!
But that doesn’t keep hundreds of folks, include yours truly, from annually harvesting black berries. And every year I still have to deal with this problem. I’m picking a handful of berries and my hand is nearly full and there are some very black, sweet, juicy ones just beyond, below or above where I am picking. So, silly me, I reach and stretch a little bit further into that dense thicket of thorns and, OUCH, I get stuck hard and all the berries in my hand fall into the dismal abyss of those tangled brambles. I just picked a huge handful of wonderful berries for the skunk family that invariably lives in that jungle of berry bushes. Dumb, greedy and stupid me! I should have known better and been content, and wise enough, to safe guard the good berries which were already in my hand by placing them into my container prior to reaching for those additional ripe berries.
This makes me think about the way folks are working today, reaching and striving so hard to make ends meet financially, or attempting to save enough up for their children’s education, wedding and even their own retirement. And then, right in the middle of their efforts, along comes a market correction, or an unexpected financial need, or the reality of the actual taxes required to be paid in retirement and, OUCH, there goes all their hard earned savings right into the hands of some financial planner, Wall Street broker, the IRS, or some other common varmint. And the stench from this is not pretty either.
How much easier, safer and rewarding would it be for folks to just securely guard their hard earned money by placing it into a participating whole life insurance policy. Then their financial efforts would be guaranteed, protected for life, and very accessible for any need that comes along, like education, weddings, retirement or even for purchasing day to day necessities like groceries or utility bills. No taxes, management fees, no Wall Street blues, just pure and simple profit. That is the benefits that await you and your loved ones once you understand the real truth about participating whole life insurance. It warms your heart even better than a fresh blackberry pie and you don’t even have to deal with the thorns.
By Tomas McFie
Time to get registered for the Orlano Florida Hands on Workshop!
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