I Could Tell You Where I Went This Morning . . .

But if I did, my daughter would kill me.

Wild blueberries grow in our area but you have to know where to find them. And once you've staked out a good wild blueberry picking area, the location is guarded with great secrecy. These family plots (family plots? Doesn't that refer to . . . oh, never mind) are handed down from generation to generation and are greatly prized. Sometimes in-laws aren't even told of the locations. (Well, what if the marriage didn't last? You might end up with somebody outside the family moving in on your territory, for heaven's sake.)

Although we've lived here for thirty-six years now, alas and alack, we've never had a family blueberry picking spot. It's really sad.

That is until . . . dum-da-dum-dum . . . this year. My daughter has been scouting out this particular area for months now and a couple of weeks ago . . . YES! She declared it was indeed going to offer up a fair amount of wild blueberries for the picking. And she's sure no one else knows about the location!

So we made plans early in the week that this morning would be the date for Mom and Pop to arrive at Chicken Mama's house with bowls and buckets in hand.

We arrived at the appointed time and were immediately blindfolded, bound and gagged and tossed into the back of Chicken Mama and Chainsaw Tommy's pick-up truck. (She still feels a little shakey, you see, about finally finding her very own spot. Remember, she grew up with parents who never did manage to secure a wild blueberry plot for the family. Sigh. We fell so short in so many areas.) We were then driven around for about 45 minutes, frequently going in circles I'm sure, to sufficiently confuse us.

When we finally reached the destination, we had no idea where we were but were given our buckets and told to go pick.

Here's Chicken Mama, happy as could be, gathering those tiny, treasured berries.

Chainsaw Tommy filling his bowl. (But, wait, is he putting berries in . . . or taking them out?)

I may look happy here but I was pretty cranky. The mosquitoes were out in full force and I tend to attract any biting insect within a ten mile radius of my body.

Here's the Bearded Wonder with his stash. (I've been giving him a particularly hard time lately because of his scruffiness. If I don't corral that man and give him a hair cut and beard trim tomorrow, I'm not taking him out of the house again.)

I gotta give our daughter credit for having sharp enough eyes to spot this location that has lots of wild blueberry plants scattered over quite an area. And it seems we even got there before the bears located the harvest and scarfed them all up. Good thing moose aren't fond of blueberries because there was plenty of evidence of their presence around today. I knelt in more than my share of (thankfully old and dried) moose droppings!