Blueberry Picking

The picture was taken from the road.

That circle represents the first of 5 rows of
blueberry bushes.

Friday afternoon, I swung by and picked up Deb and we made the trek out to "North Fouke" Arkansas to Leah's latest bit o'land. Recently purchased, Leah discovered it had more than 100 blueberry bushes on it. And for some crazy reason, nobody had thought to harvest the blueberries. 

Deb, who is always prepared, loaded us up on mosquito and chigger repellant. I donned a pair of gloves and a long-sleeved shirt, in hopes of keeping the poison ivy off my skin. She sported a neck fan to keep the heat at bay. 

All this was happening while I was carrying my basket with my one good arm. You see, somehow I managed to dislocate my shoulder last Thursday. Though I'm fine (I had an anterior dislocation. Marty has a posterior one, which requires probably a year worth of physical therapy and potential surgery), my arm is pretty sore and yesterday it did not need any additional strain. Therefore, Deb, ever the nurturer, took it upon herself to whack the grass with the hoe before every step, hoping to scare off any potential critters which might be hiding in the knee high grass. 

What I hadn't planned for was that 90 degrees to Deb and 90 degrees for me are very different. Deb lasted about five minutes in the "heat" before I insisted she make her way back to the car and turn on the air conditioning. We had a big old tussle about who got to keep the hoe, with me winning and telling her to take it with her BACK through the knee-high grass. If I saw anything slithering, I was going to scream, and toss my blueberry basket at the thing and then run back to the car. 

An over-sized bowl
with a lot of blueberries.

About ten minutes later, Leah showed up, unlocked the house (which comes with the land) and made Deb comfortable inside, where she kept herself busy by calling Tessa. Then Leah joined me as we finished picking the front side of the first row of blueberries. I wasn't going to risk my luck by heading deeper into that grass just for a few more berries. 

That said, I came away with two and a half pounds of fruit, plenty for jam. Plus, Leah said if I need more, just head back out and collect more berries. I'm thinking if I need more, I'll just head over to WalMart and buy some. 

By the way, the only critters I ran into were fire ants. Lots of them.