{"id":239,"date":"2011-05-27T10:19:24","date_gmt":"2011-05-27T14:19:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/?p=239"},"modified":"2011-05-27T10:19:25","modified_gmt":"2011-05-27T14:19:25","slug":"coastal-carolina-blueberries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/?p=239","title":{"rendered":"Coastal Carolina Blueberries"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Here in Coastal Carolina, with our abundance of sandy soil, blueberry picking season is in full swing. My first year after moving to the island, I completely missed blueberry season in part because I had been accustomed to much later start dates along the Lake Michigan coast.<\/p>\n

So, now well-familiar with the timing of the season, yesterday morning my daughter and I decided to go blueberry picking on our way to a birthday party. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve always wanted to do this with the small people, but the boys have never had any interest in picking berries, in part because they don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t eat berries. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve tried to entice them and failed miserably. My daughter, on the other hand, eats just about anything, and really likes berries. So she was jumping out of her seat, ready to go the moment I mentioned it.<\/p>\n

As is often the case, a series of small things went slightly awry that morning, setting us behind on our schedule. Therefore, we were just going to pop into the blueberry patch for a few minutes, mainly to see it and make plans to return later.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>However, once we got there, you would have thought my daughter ran the blueberry patch. Single-handedly. With precision and without hesitation, she selected a bush and began picking. I reminded her that we only had five minutes to pick, but it was as if I wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t there<\/em>. Seriously, that girl was intent on her mission, and no one, not even the parental figure that stood as the bridge between her and the birthday pool party she had begged to attend, was going to interrupt her.<\/p>\n

When she began picking, I tried to explain to her that the blue-colored blueberries were the desirable ones. She smiled patiently and followed the rule, at first. Then, she decided that the blue blueberries needed a few green and purple accents, for aesthetic reasons. There was no persuading her otherwise, because it was as if I wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t there<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Normally, this would have irritated me to no end, and we would have had words, so to speak. However, she really didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mean any disrespect to me with her attitude. She was just so completely absorbed in the moment, the way four-year-olds can sometimes be. She took to the whole experience the way my eldest took to riding a bike; there was no instruction, because he was clearly born to ride bikes like she was born to pick blueberries. I just didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to interrupt the moment for her, so I let her run free with it for a while.<\/p>\n

In the end, she had her way with the blueberries. Which was as it should be, because there are a finite number of experiences in life like that one was for her, and far be it from me to take one of those away from her. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m just thankful that I was there to see it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here in Coastal Carolina, with our abundance of sandy soil, blueberry picking season is in full swing. My first year after moving to the island, I completely missed blueberry season in part because I had been accustomed to much later start dates along the Lake Michigan coast. So, now well-familiar with the timing of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,4],"tags":[108,110,111,109,105],"class_list":["post-239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-islandlife","category-island-parenting","tag-blueberries","tag-blueberry-picking","tag-blueberry-season","tag-coastal-carolina","tag-island-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=239"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}