by Cherice Bock

The other day, my mom brought us a bag of frozen blueberries, because she knew our boys like to have them as a snack, and we were out of blueberries. While I appreciated the gesture, I hesitated. Why?! Why, you might ask, would you hesitate, when your kids’ nana brings them a HEALTHY snack (as opposed to sending them home hyped up on sugar, like many loving nanas are wont to do)?

Well, I hesitated, because blueberries are one of those things that I try to hold a little bit sacred as a food that we eat in season, or until our local, u-pick batch runs out from the previous summer. If the boys didn’t want to stay in the field long enough to get enough berries to last through the entire year in the freezer, tough luck. No more blueberries until June.

Have you ever tasted a sun-warmed Oregon blueberry, fresh off the blueberry bush? Sweet and tangy, warm and luscious: just the right amount of squish and substance.

Truth be told, my boys generally don’t want to spend any more time in the field because they have eaten so many that they have nearly made themselves sick. We’re working on that. One year at a time.

by Cherice Bock

This morning, my two-year-old joined me on the couch at about 7:00 am. We were waking up and chatting when we saw a huge bird fly by the window. We have a fairly large pond in the back (see picture) and two small ponds in the front, so I've seen the blue heron before when I've startled it (accidentally) by bursting out the back door when it was trying to pilfer our goldfish. We used to stock the pond with koi, but that gets rather expensive when feeding a heron! I hadn't seen it go to the front ponds before, and my son hadn't seen it at all.

I wanted to show the heron to my son so I picked him up and tried to approach the window slowly to get a better view. We could see its head and we stopped, it's left eye pointed right at us. Trying to get a better view, I took a couple steps closer, and off swooped the heron. "Oh well," we said, and sat back down on the couch.

As we read a Dr. Seuss book, out of the corner of my eye I saw a large shadow fly in again. "There it is!" we both said, excitedly, and tried to be quieter and calmer approaching the window, but again, the heron flew away before we got a very long look. I tried to pull out my phone to take a picture, which scared it off.