Berries

I've been thinking a lot about BERRIES lately.



Last summer, on our trip to Washington, we stumbled upon some blueberry bushes. We were visiting a good friend of mine from college in Seattle. A friend of hers rented a place that had a long row of blueberry bushes in the backyard. It was July and the berries were ripe, so we ended up heading to his house and picking blueberries in the late evening sun. Then we sat on the deck, ate blueberries and shared a couple pints of Ben and Jerry's ice cream, straight out of the carton. It was just one of those perfect evenings...an old friend, my family, being the northwest, ice cream...and then, on top of all that: blueberries!! I have thought about that night so many times in the last year. Ever since then, I have dreamed about growing my own blueberry bushes in containers in our backyard. Although it won't happen this summer, I do hope to get out and pick some Ohio berries this summer. I've been looking at Windy Hill Berry Farm for our berry picking adventures. Do you have a favorite central Ohio berry farm?

With berries on my mind, I bought home Blueberries for Sal a few weeks ago. Amazingly, I had actually never read this classic before. I love the alpine meadow setting of the illustrations. Eliza is very interested in looking for the mama when we read this. She also likes when I make the "kaplink" sound for the berries landing in an empty bucket and of course pretending to eat the berries. We pretend eat A LOT over here. I was pretty surprised she is so interested in this book, since it is quite long, but she loves it. I think her love of blueberries has something to do with it. We have actually been reading this a lot over breakfast, while we eat these blueberry muffins, a favorite recipe of ours. When DO the blueberries get ripe in Ohio? Very soon, I hope!