Blueberry Picking One More Time

Oops, we did it again! Kinda like Britney Spears, except not.

We had so much fun blueberry picking last time that we decided to try it again. This time, my daughter and I brought along my more loquacious half, which made for interesting picking, as I’ll explain in a minute.

Last time, our goal was to explore more than anything. This time, our goal was to pick. And pick we did. My daughter was ecstatic when we arrived to find that they had colored buckets available now, so she naturally chose a pink one. In her world, pink dominates all. Loquacious also chose a bucket. In his world, large buckets dominate all, so he chose a large one.

Whereas last time, we sort of wandered aimlessly, this time, since my husband was there, we walked with purpose. First, we had to peruse several of the rows before the picking commenced to ascertain which varieties and rows had the best berries at this point in time. Besides dealing with certain personality issues, we also had to deal with the fact that my husband’s grandfather was a blueberry farmer in his retirement, so from my husband’s perspective, there was nothing casual about picking blueberries. There was strategy.

Okay.

So, strategically, we moved down the first row deemed worthy of our picking. We also had another quick lesson in which colors to pick, this one taught by my husband, who made no allowances for accent colors.

My daughter was a little more distracted this time, in part because one of her preschool friends was picking a few rows over. Apparently, sometimes four-year-old little girls think it’s fun to stare at each other between the bushes without ever actually going over and saying “hi.” At my age, if I engaged in such behavior, I’d earn the label “stalker” rather than the descriptor “cute.” It’s funny how a few years changes things.

After a few minutes of alternating between picking and redirecting my daughter, she realized that we had been ditched by Loquacious, so she set off to find him.

When she found him, what followed was a strange, unending monologue on blueberries. For the next half hour, my husband went on and on about blueberries and what must be every memory he has associated with this fruit. Who knew there is that much to say about blueberries? Well, in all honesty, I didn’t know there is that much to say about blueberries per se, but I did know there is that much to say in general because I’m married to the man, and he can speak ad nauseum about anything. Anything. Or about nothing at all.

At the end, we walked away with about four times the number of blueberries that we had picked the first time. Oh, and this time, none of the blueberries were green, thus proving that speaking softly (and incessantly) and carrying a big stick (or bucket) is most effective in domestic policy as well.