For about half an hour a day for the past month or so, usually in the evenings, I’ve enjoyed my blueberry meditation period, quietly picking fruits from our eight highbush blueberry bushes. The process is simple:  get a quart container, stand at the plant, set part of your brain to “blue or not blue” mode and, while you pick, let the rest of your mind drift. Breathe in the outdoor summer air, breathe out your troubles.  Antioxidants aren’t the only healing properties of blueberries!

Once your troubles are breathed out, bits of nature start to
infiltrate your consciousness. Bumblebees on red clover, honeybees on
Queen Anne’s lace, a damselfly alighting on a blueberry branch, Canada
geese flying in formation so close overhead that you can hear their
wings beating in unison. So many crickets chirping that anyone without
hearing loss would think he had tinnitus, and anyone with tinnitus will
have that irritation masked. What are all those crickets chirping about
all the time?

Sometimes, after picking in one spot for a few minutes and standing
relatively still, you may be joined by cedar waxwings, also looking for
fruit — until you move to a new spot and startle them into noisy flight.

When the quart is full, I bring it into the kitchen, where it sits
on the windowsill for a day to further ripen any not-quite-blue berries
that slipped in. I meditate on the price of organic blueberries (no
nasty Guthion pesticide here!) and on how each picking saves about 5
dollars. Then I make a pie, muffins, or a cobbler, and sit and meditate
on the deep blueberry flavor.

The Fedco Trees catalog is a good source of information about growing blueberries. Plant a few varieties to extend the harvest (meditation) season.

Jean English is the editor of MOFGA’s, The Maine Organic Farmer & Gardener.