oh summer, I hardly knew thee

I've always loved berries, and since I've moved to this part of the world I've started marking my summer by the berry picking.

June...I remember it like it was yesterday...driving out to Luneyberries, my gas tank on E, a whistle on my lips, a zip in my step and pants that weren't appropriate for dirt and broken berries. I spent a hot, steamy morning lying down in rows and picking strawberries, interrupted only briefly by an older man who surprised me a bit and turned out to be lying in a row right next to me. Inches from my face really.

"Good berries this year!" he said.

Then there were the raspberries up in the garden, mid-summer. Every year Tom and Bob the Gardener have been adding more raspberries. It's a little fishy where these raspberry bushes actually come from as neither of them will give me a straight answer about it.

"Bob knows a guy over across the causeway, blah, blah, mumble, mumble mumble"

It's probably better I don't know the source of their raspberry harvesting.

Just this week Tom and Bob and I went over to Lavalier's for their final blueberry day. We got there at 7:30 in the morning, and already people were packed into the rows. Bob and I sat together on our big white buckets, me grabbing the berries he couldn't see because of the macular degeneration, and him chatting up the ladies near us. It went something like this:

"I usually wash 'em, clean em, and freeze them on cookie sheets."

"That's what I do!" one answered, the other said, "Oh I just throw them in old milk jugs and wash 'em when I take them out of the freezer!"

For some reason Bob then went on to discuss the state of our hospital in town. "They brought that staff infection from the old place with them! Even the employees don't go there!"

It was a great morning and the blueberries were huge and ripe. We froze a lot of them and last night I tried my hand at making blueberry syrup.

And finally, there's my favorite. The second cousin once removed of the berry world. The blackberries. Our woods are lousy with these berries, and I mean that in the best possible way. Everywhere you go, thorny, scratchy blackberry bushes... bushes filled with berries that taste wonderful, if you catch them just right, even though they leave a seed in your dental work. Berries so strong, so hearty, and so painful if you reach for the really good ones, they could take over the world, or at the very least, Cohasset.

With blackberries, it's not even about the berries for me. It's that there are so many that I wind up socializing more. Last weekend Cristin and Jon were here and we picked. The other day Raina stopped by and we picked some for her company that's coming to town for the Farm & Antique Tractor Threshing Show in Blackberry, and this weekend, Lee and Kim and the kids are coming to pick some more. I'm thinking of inviting some work friends next week to pick even more.

So I'll pick blackberries while they are there, and try not to think about that they also signify the ending of summer.

How's your summer going?