pick those berries...

 Once again my west coast brother has supplied me with a theme for my blog.  Today is, according to him, "Pick Blueberries Day" which brings back several berry related memories.  By the way, I have never picked blueberries, unless picking them up in clear plastic boxes at the grocery store counts.  I do love blueberries.  But I have picked strawberries, and the weeds that grow up around them, in the cool of the morning, as my mother said, when I was very young and strawberries were growing in our garden.  I have also picked elderberries, teeny tiny little berries that grow in bunches on brittle little branches.  First you snap the bunches off the bushes, then sit on the back porch (not far from the strawberry patch) and pick every little teeny tiny berry off the branches.  When you finally have enough, approximately 27 years later, they do make a very tasty pie.  But the most fun I have had berry picking was when I was an adult living with my family in rural southeastern Ohio.  My next door neighbor and I would climb the gradual hill behind our houses to pick wild blackberries.  She knew where they grew.  The trick was to pick them when they were nice and ripe and juicy, but before the birds had stripped the bushes bare.  It was tricky but we always seemed to pick enough to keep our families happy and it was sheer pleasure to walk away from house work and among the wild berry bushes. Happy picking everyone.