Today's adventure - blueberry picking!

I set the alarm for an early Saturday morning, actually managed to get out of bed when it went off, and poured the kid into the car, all so that we could drive down to Martin Blueberries to take advantage of their early-bearing bushes.  I had never picked blueberries before (well, not since I was a kid and a friend and I snuck into her neighbor's yard to snitch from her giant blueberry bush), so it was a new experience for both of us.  Liza got into it right away, "tickling" the clumps of berries so they'd fall off into her bucket.

Row after row of bushes - hundreds of bushes, acres of bushes - of maybe a dozen different varieties that mature from now until the end of August.  The place is huge, but really well-organized and well-maintained, and picking there was a true pleasure.  No reaching into thorny bushes (yes, I'm talking about you, raspberry picking!), no constant bending over to the ground to search for hiding fruit (yes, I'm talking about you, strawberry picking!), no dodging wasps or stepping on squishy windfalls that seep into your sandals (yes, I'm talking about you, apple picking!) - just tickling berries that were right out in the open and eating nearly as many as we got into our buckets.

We were there for less than an hour and managed to fill up a 2-gallon bucket without hardly breaking a sweat.  That's about $15 of blueberries, which translates to quarts and quarts of them.  I'll be washing them up tomorrow and getting some ready to freeze, while some will end up in muffins (and on our cereal ... and eaten out of hand) right away.  And I'll probably have them all used up and be ready to pick more by next weekend.  After all, cherry season is almost over, and a girl's got to overdo it on some kind of fruit each week, right?