Blueberry Pickin' on the Farm

Hugo, my dear, I haven't forgotten about you and your dashing haircut straight out of an earlier Romantic-poet era. You had the strength to partner with Bonnie, the trailblazing woman author, artist, and teacher, so I won't be forgetting to write about your life.

But I had to take a little break and share some weekend blueberry-picking pictures, just because I finally uncovered my camera from its hiding place and because it's summer time and the living was easy this past weekend--handfuls of fat round blueberries just falling off the bushes into our waiting hands (and one waiting mouth!).This irridescent beetle was enjoying the blueberries, too. You can see the progress he's made on the plumpest, ripest blueberry of the bunch.A sunny flower bed near the farm store invites you for an afternoon nap.These farm animals have quite the life under these old, shady trees.If you look closely, you can see that this nest is woven partially from animal hair! I bet goat and donkey hair make soft cradles for little birds.I always have to remember to look up--way up, in the case of this tree. It's hard to tell from the picture, but there are two tiers of thick wood fungi growing in the tree.

I'm not a flag-waving patriot, but I do appreciate the great beauty and bounty in the country that I live in. This shot of grain being fed through a chute in the covered barn seemed so quintessentially summertime American rural that I had to capture it. There's something about how farmers care for the land here and raise crops in the face of often fickle nature and dwindling incomes that makes me appreciate the tough life they live.