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I found my thrill
Yesterday morning we took a drive up into the hinterlands of Dutchess County to go wild organic blueberry picking. Well, kind of groomed wild blueberry picking, anyway. Blueberry Park's a place where you can pick your own blueberries from bushes that have been there, unfertilized and unsprayed, since the owners of the property bought it in 1929. The eight year-old boy who brought us our picking baskets told us this, and it tickled me to think of the bushes having a much longer history than the person offering their use to us with a loving, if well-rehearsed, speech.
The berries are tiny and sweet and deep deep blue, most of the bushes taller than me. It takes a long time to get much fruit, volume-wise, because the berries are so small, and because unlike some more cultivated types not all of the berries in the clusters ripen at once. The bushes are of different varieties, I think, some with berries that have frosted surfaces, others with berries a shiny blue-purple. But the day was clear and not too hot, and by the end of perhaps an hour and a half two of us had collected about 4 pounds of berries, about 6 pints worth, for which we paid a grand total of $5.00. I suppose you might consider that we'd worked hard for them, but considering I don't normally pick fruit for a living, I felt like the price included free entertainment at the top of a beautiful country hill.
I got a little reminder lesson from the blueberry bushes about perspective. You can think you've picked everything ripe and blue from one of them, but then someone who is a different height than you can see what you've missed. Bard picked the tops of the bushes. I got underneath the branches where he had finished, and from where I stood, it looked like he hadn't gotten very much of the fruit at all. Crawling underneath one of the bushes, I found a wild raspberry vine, with a few ripe berries on it. Those went right into our mouths. Lagniappe. I handed one of them out to Bard. We work well together, he and I.
The blueberries were exquisitely good, unlike fruit I've been able to get anywhere else. I came home and made a batch of blueberry corn muffins and a blueberry cobbler, and I won't deny I ate a few handfuls of berries plain while I was doing it. Bard and I ate the whole cobbler after dinner in a fit of gluttony and blueberry lust. And I still have a few cups left, perhaps for a small batch of blueberry jam, perhaps just to eat in handfuls over the next day or two, until they're gone.
Some days, I just love the world.
The berries are tiny and sweet and deep deep blue, most of the bushes taller than me. It takes a long time to get much fruit, volume-wise, because the berries are so small, and because unlike some more cultivated types not all of the berries in the clusters ripen at once. The bushes are of different varieties, I think, some with berries that have frosted surfaces, others with berries a shiny blue-purple. But the day was clear and not too hot, and by the end of perhaps an hour and a half two of us had collected about 4 pounds of berries, about 6 pints worth, for which we paid a grand total of $5.00. I suppose you might consider that we'd worked hard for them, but considering I don't normally pick fruit for a living, I felt like the price included free entertainment at the top of a beautiful country hill.
I got a little reminder lesson from the blueberry bushes about perspective. You can think you've picked everything ripe and blue from one of them, but then someone who is a different height than you can see what you've missed. Bard picked the tops of the bushes. I got underneath the branches where he had finished, and from where I stood, it looked like he hadn't gotten very much of the fruit at all. Crawling underneath one of the bushes, I found a wild raspberry vine, with a few ripe berries on it. Those went right into our mouths. Lagniappe. I handed one of them out to Bard. We work well together, he and I.
The blueberries were exquisitely good, unlike fruit I've been able to get anywhere else. I came home and made a batch of blueberry corn muffins and a blueberry cobbler, and I won't deny I ate a few handfuls of berries plain while I was doing it. Bard and I ate the whole cobbler after dinner in a fit of gluttony and blueberry lust. And I still have a few cups left, perhaps for a small batch of blueberry jam, perhaps just to eat in handfuls over the next day or two, until they're gone.
Some days, I just love the world.
Behold a Mystery
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