Blueberry Tales for The Picking

I LOVE blueberry picking.

I love it for several reasons.

1) It is something my husband and I do each year – just the two of us.

2) Blueberries are delicious and wonderful to eat right off the plant or out of your favorite berry bowl.

AND!!!!

3) I hear the best snippets of conversations EVER! I confess, I love eavesdropping on conversations around me. I suspect I’m not the only one with this vice – there may be some like-minded folk right here enjoying this blog with me! Bloggers are story tellers, but we can’t tell stories without material. And there’s so much great material all around us to be had if we just listen carefully – like in the berry patch. There seems to be something about being on the other side of the berry bush that makes people think they can’t be heard.

Yet, I hear about the sister that never does her share of taking care of the parents, the neighbors whose children are atrocious, the occasional cute couple saying endearing things to one another (WAY cute if they’re on a date and blueberry picking is just one part of it), the children exclaiming over having hit the jackpot by finding the king of blueberries and/or having found ‘the giving tree’ of the blueberry patch, the mother explaining to her son that yes while it is lame that you still have to pay taxes after buying a home, it’s also a good thing because those taxes pay for things that make you want to continue to live in the neighborhood where you bought your home. And, of course, the children that ask ‘are we done yet?’.

I LOVE it all. If I were to go berry picking and there was no one else in the berry patch, I don’t think I could stay long enough to pick all 30+lbs of blueberries that we get each year.

My husband actually moves us to another area of the row if the language of those around us is one I can’t translate (seriously – this particular blueberry farm seems to be quite the international venue; we’ve heard Russian, French, German, Chinese, and Spanish), or if there doesn’t seem to be much conversation – that’s how much he wants to make sure I keep picking!!!

Let this be a lesson to all of you out there – a blueberry bush does not a sound barrier make! – M