fun in threes, sometimes fours
around the house
4
One of the reasons I hate sweet gum trees is their tendency to grow everywhere. Across from our front yard is a whole stand of them, and I spend a significant amount of time each year picking up the spikey seed pods so that I don't have to pull up 500+ saplings.
On tonight's walk, I saw that they will indeed grow anywhere.
6
I'm not sure how many blueberries I've picked over the last week. By weight, K and I estimate it's somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 kilos. We know the weight in kilograms because K's recipe is from Poland, and so the measurements are sensible. The internet tells me that that's somewhere between 11,000 and 35,000 blueberries, depending on the size. It's ridiculous to think I performed that same simple action thousands of times over the last week.
A busy day with phone calls, an attempted repair of the oven (only to discover the part is wrong), a long evening walk, and reminders that our departure is ever nearer.
An early summer walk for the first time in sandals reveals just how much time I've spent outdoors already: nice tan lines that suggest I've been doing more than I feel I have. By now, I usually have sandal tan lines; I started correcting that this evening.
Of course there's this fact to the right
13
They’re really both a blessing and a curse. The half a dozen blueberry bushes we have at the base of our driveway produce so many berries that we can make jams and cobblers through the early summer and even freeze some, but it does require picking them. And that is the rub.
It always seems to be an all or nothing prospect. One day there are hardly any ripe. The next day you have to spend two hours in an attempt to make a dent endless berries
Today, for example, I must have picked five or more pounds of blueberries. It's such a tedious process: as you move to the next section of a blueberry patch, you notice hiding just behind the smallest of leaves a cluster of four more ripe berries that you didn't notice when you were in that section of the blueberry patch. So you're constantly picking and repicking, checking, and rechecking, moving left and right, up and down. Throughout each blueberry bush. Throughout the entire patch. Until you're certain that you have checked the same section at least half a dozen times.
Then K comes home from work and her portion of the work only begins. Transforming those sweet berries into lovely jam, takes the entire evening. We will enjoy throughout the winter months, but she doesn't enjoy them now.
Finally, there's a certain sisyphean element to it: no sooner do you finish picking one round of bright berries and the next batch ripens to rich, dark blue, and you start all over again.
School is out. The list is complete. We begin the projects, great and small.
The same weeds that plague us plague everyone...
Forever crooked thanks to guests backing out of our neighbor's driveway...