Blueberry Park

I've taken my niece and nephew, who I nanny a few times a week, to Blueberry Park on occasion to pick blueberries and be out in the summer sun.  We had a particularly successful picking day, as luck would have it, today as there were several bushes full of ripe blueberries to pick.

I don't know what it is about blueberries that I love so much- it certainly isn't their flavor.  They're good, but there are other fruits that i prefer to taste in my mouth.  My theory is that I appreciate and respect the process that each blueberry bush goes through every summer.

At first, the blueberries form but are green for a long time.  Slowly individual berries, in no particular order, will begin to ripen, changing color from green to reddish purple, then finally to a deep dark blackish blue.  All those berries of any one bush will never ripen to perfection in tandem- instead, one by one, they decide on their own when they will begin the process of becoming edible.

The ritual of picking blueberries then has become one of patience and perseverance for me, rather than one of instant gratification.  A lesson that i will probably always be learning in my life.