The job of taging and sorting bundles of berry bushes is a spring time annual event for our fruit club. The list of people able or willing to meet out at the Ruffus's blueberry farm to help to sort was missing the needed hands. I decided that John and my grandchildren could join me and we would lend support.
Mira, seven, had Friday off of school for teachers enrichment day so on these days she often accompanies her brother to school and acts as a student teacher in the small private preschool Ahman is attending. The four of us ate our car lunches of peautnut butter banana sandwiches, oranges and grapes heading northwest toward Hood Canal and Ruffus's hill top home. The day of low clouds and rain, high lighted the moss cover forest and we all talked about a world made for dinosarus movies.
With four other people, we got to the task of color coding 200 bushes of five different varieties. These bushes three and four years old, all grown by a nursery in Oregan for the national market. The large building, Ruffus uses for this, is the place his camper and extra vihecles are usually stored.
Mira teamed up immediately with a high school student using yellow tape, Ahman and John were on my team, we unbundled variety and marked them with red tape. Then the square dance started . Some stood in place and handed off bushes and some ran the line and gathered one of each variety to make a new bundle of five. Ahman was in charge of green, John manned the red station, Mira handled white. There were three of us running to station to station gathering and bagging. Soon I notice that when I got to Mira she had my remaining colors ready for me. She quickly saw how the dance work and creating a hibrid of our movements.
Before all it was over, we noticed that Judy had come out of the house with a plate of homemade cookies and tea and juice. We all stood around, muddy hands and feets muching on cookies and recounting the bundles we had made for the fundraiser of our fruit club.
Mira spoke up, " Each year I get this day off of school and I can come back next year and help out again." My heart smiled along with the faces of everyone else.
The view from Ruffus's property looks south to the Black Hills, north toward the National Olympia Moutain Park and immediately below is the southern end of Hood Canal. Friday the sheet of white fog offered no view at all. Artists camp on his property to paint the view.
Someday this summer I am going to pack another car lunch , I have to take Mira and Ahman back to the site for the view and we can remember the day we sorted blueberry bundles.
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