Berry Picking

Our raspberry patch has yielded a bumper crop this year.

Raspberries are good at hiding themselves under leaves.  You have to lift the branches.  Unlike strawberries they can be picked from a comfortable standing position for the most part, but it pays to occasionally squat low and look into the undersides of the bushes.

Off to a good start.  We fill the cups and then empty them into the bucket.  That limits the risk of spilling an entire bucket.

Our blueberry patch is beginning to produce well.

Here you just set the bucket next to the bush and drop the berries into it.

But what is the purpose of picking berries?  That is the great existential question. To make jam? Yes, but there are higher and better uses for those berries.  Berry picking easily excites our greedy, acquisitive instincts, but there is no joy in hoarding. A higher, perhaps highest,  use is to dump a whole mugful  of sun-warmed berries on a bowl of ice cream and sit in the shade with your feet up with a cup of coffee and a good book to read. When you have an abundance of your own berries you don't have to scrimp.  You can do this on a daily basis and still have lots of berries to make into jam.

But they shall sit every man under his vine or under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid: for the mouth of the Lord of hosts hath spoken it.  Micah 4:4
Life is good.

Big sister fills her bowl.

Little sister's berries go straight into her mouth.

Life is good.