Strawberries

One berry
Two berry
Pick me a blueberry

....

Three berry

Four berry

Hayberry

Strawberry

Finger and pawberry

My berry, yaw* berry

from Jamberry by Bruce Degen

* Ray insists on saying it yaw - berry, in keeping with pawberry. Really, it is your berry...

In spite of astoundingly bad weather (wet wet :: rain rain :: repeat repeat), strawberry season is here.

Alden and I picked one morning last week, in pretty perfect conditions, actually. Not raining, but, not hot or sunny or muggy, really, either. I was aiming for filling one box. Towards the end, he said, "you know, mom, we should pick another box." WHOA! I was gob-smacked.... He was actually having fun and wanted to do more. Amazing. That day we picked about 13 pounds.

The following week, in spite of pretty bad conditions, we went back again, because, you know, 13 pounds is really not that much.

We picked 20 pounds that day.

Do the math: 13 +20= 33. That's about what Milo weighs. We picked a Milo-worth of strawberries. [he then ate a pretty serious percentage of his weight of them. Yeah, it's a little worrisome...]

That was mostly Ray and me. Milo ran around and Alden picked a few and then skulked off to the car to read. Picking started out slowly. The rain is really taking a toll on the berries, and it was just not that easy to get lots of berries quickly. But, Ray got seriously bitten by the berry-picking bug (you can get sort of obsessed, picking berries, and you keep needing to just "pick a few more") and so we kept talking about bailing but meanwhile kept picking.

So far, we have frozen 44 cups (we'll use those mostly to make smoothies, all year long).

Next up: jam making.

Under the bridge

And over the dam

Looking for berries

Berries for jam

(more from Jamberry*)

*it's a silly little book, but oddly, it really grows on you, and you find yourself saying the lines in your head, and even out loud, and you never really mind reading it, when the occasion arises.