September 17, 2011

Blueberries picked from the bushes in containers outside my kitchen door. Hummingbirds hover at blossom time and I watch while eating breakfast.

I look at my blueberries and think of Blueberries for Sal which I read to my sons when they were little and we lived in New England.

I remember summer afternoons with my sons, picking low-bush blueberries on Blueberry Hill near Ipswich and Aggasiz Rock in Manchester.

I smile when I read Robert Frost’s poem from North of Boston.

Blueberries 
"You ought to have seen what I saw on my way  
To the village, through Mortenson's pasture to-day:  
Blueberries as big as the end of your thumb,  
Real sky-blue, and heavy, and ready to drum  
In the cavernous pail of the first one to come!          
And all ripe together, not some of them green  
And some of them ripe! You ought to have seen!"

And now I have good memories and my little potted blueberry bushes.  They responded to some light pruning mid-summer and produced another crop.

Blueberries top my breakfast cereal and fruit salads. Sometimes on the way to the garden, I pick a deeply blue one.  I savor the intense flavor and remember blueberries in New England. 

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