Words for Wednesday: a berry good summer

If it’s summertime at our house, you can be sure of a number of aspects.

The front porch swing is prepared for visitors to enjoy a nice, breezy summer day.

The perennial flower bed and various pots of brightly colored blooms, including porch boxes, paint some brilliance among the green expanse of yard.

The vegetable garden flourishes with summer squash, tomatoes, cucumbers, green beans, zucchini, green peppers, and sometimes peas and pumpkins.

The fence is to keep the deer from eating our veggies!

And there will be blueberries. If the weather cooperates, the Japanese beetles don’t attack, and our structured enclosure with netting prevents the birds from feasting, scads of blueberries await picking.  

We are in the throes of filling our pails with tasty blueberries right now. They commence ripening around the fourth of July every year often coinciding with our grown-up kids flying “home” to roost for an Independence Day celebration.

Last year, because of the you know what, Papa and I picked our berries mostly by ourselves with a little help from nearby daughter and grandchild, who loves blueberries. When she was just a toddler, she called them “blueies” and gobbled them up as quickly as she could pick them (and still does!).

This past Independence Day, our oldest daughter and son-in-love traveled northeast from their home to ours to celebrate with us for the first time since Christmas 2019.

Unfortunately, our son, daughter-in-love and two other grandchildren from the state next door were not able to make the journey this time and we missed having our entire family together again, which hasn’t happened since our all-family beach trip in August 2020. But we have high hopes for an all-family get-together soon.

In between gorging on picnic food, playing tons of games indoor and outside, catching fireflies, and watching our own little version of fireworks in our back yard, we enjoyed some blueberry picking over the July 4^th weekend.

It was hot and it was a bit sweaty, but the labor was worth the prize.

Fresh blueberries for breakfast on your cereal or in your pancakes, waffles, or muffins are delicious. Anything with blueberries is berry good just like this summer has been at our country home.

 “You’ll never regret eating blueberries or working up a sweat.” ~  Jacquelyn Mitchard

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