A couple of gallons!

  Last night, my brother called me with an invitation to pick blueberries at his place.  His garden has really had a bad time with all of the rain but the blueberries were doing well.  The way his property sits makes the water puddle almost like a pond.  This drowns any little plants but bushes take advantage of the moisture.  I was elated to get the call and assured him that we would head up that way at first light.  My only question was concerning the number of pails that would be needed.  "Oh, you will only get a couple of gallons."  was his answer.  "They are just starting to get ripe."  Ok!  

  Before we headed out this morning, my son, Michael and I gathered up the plastic pails.  I had two.  That should work since he did say a "couple" of gallons.  On a whim, I picked up a large four gallon basin.  This would at least serve to keep the gallon buckets from overturning on the ride back home.  We arrived a little after seven in the morning.  The sun was just peeping over the pines at the edge of his garden.  As we walked to the furthest end of the blueberry rows, I noticed that there were a good many berries ripe.  Hmmm...a couple of gallons?  Michael made notice of the size of the berries.  These things were huge!!!  What easy picking this would be!  A couple of gallons would be quick work.  We started on the smallest bushes and worked our way back toward the car.  By the time we reached the two rows of large bushes, we already had a full gallon of the plump berries.  Were we to only get one more gallon off of these huge bushes?  I think not!  We picked.  About two hours into our chore, the berries started looking small.  The size had not actually changed...by blueberry standards, they were still huge.  By picking standards, they had suddenly become teeny-tiny!  The end of the row seemed to be miles away!  A couple of gallons...yeah, right!  We could pick until the cows come home and never reach the end of those rows!  We picked.

  At the end of three hours, we had filled every container we had carried with us.  Short of dumping the buckets into the trunk of the car, our picking had come to a halt.  Looking at the number of bushes left unpicked, we just shook our heads.  A couple of gallons was a slight understatement on my brother's part.  He SHOULD have said that there were billions of blueberries awaiting our picking!  He did not...and we picked...and picked...and picked.  (I promise I saw a few cows heading to the barn long before we finished!)  

Arriving home, he flagged us down in the driveway.  "How many did you get?" he queried.  Duh!!!!  I just stared at him and said "A couple of gallons."  Then...I opened the car door and he got a glimpse of the buckets.  A wide grin spread across his face.  That man knew!  A couple of gallons.  Yep.  Sure.  I must say that I have wonderful brothers!  Wow! To share this many blueberries is a very nice deed.  In three hours, Michael and I picked five gallons of the sweet blueberries and we easily could have filled "a couple of more gallons"!