...sometimes even a single feather is enough to fly. (Robert Maclean)

7.28.2012

picking blueberries

Blueberry time!
Blueberries are my favorite local fruit to pick.
So easy.

 Just reach in there with your hands and massage them off their stems.
If they're ready and they want to come, they will.
plop plop plop
into the bucket!

or, as Robert McCloskey writes in Blueberries for Sal,
kuplink
kuplank
kuplunk!

But one of the best things about picking
 is that sometimes
the places
are just so beautiful.

breathtaking views of the valley here.

When I walk down to pick it feels like a whole mountainside is
covered in blueberry bushes.

We normally spend about 1.5 hours and manage to fill our buckets right up.
My lady friend always outpicks me, though.
(Or maybe I just out-eat her.)
I think it's a bit of both!

But who could resist sneaking handfuls of these blue jewels?
Certainly not I.

Full of antioxidants. 
So good and so good for us.

___________________________________________________

By the time I'm done picking I usually feel like the girl in
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
who ends up turning into a giant blueberry!

What do we do with 24 pounds of blueberries???

Besides stuffing ourselves with reckless abandon
until our hands and teeth look like we're turning into Smurfs,
we took our buckets of "bloobs" home and
baked a deep dish blueberry pie +
a giant blueberry cake
and froze the rest.

And we'll probably go again!

Maybe we'll make blueberry fruit leathers for the winter.
 Or press and can some blueberry juice.
Better yet, maybe some blueberry cordial or wine...

Oh, the possibilities!

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