Taking Charge

So, one of the things that I had on my list of things to do on Rob’s day off was go pick blueberries after his doctor’s appointment on Wednesday. I have never done it before, and thought it would be fun to do. Well, today Rob came home early and I had to send him to the store for stuff to finish dinner. We sat there talking and the decision was made that we’d go pick blueberries.

I really have no idea how that decision actually came about, but we got dressed and headed off to pick blueberries. It was fun, relaxing and it was thoroughly enjoyable to play in the field, listening to others who are doing the same thing. We plan on going back to pick more, since we left sooner than I would have liked. I had walked to the car to get my phone and it was ringing. Silly me left it in the car, thinking I wouldn’t need it. Oh well. That wasn’t really a pleasant phone call, so we cut the picking short.

I am going again, we picked just shy of 4lbs of berries and want more to freeze for use all winter. We even gave some to my cousin before we headed home, so we ended up with 3lbs or more when we came home. Anyway. That’s blueberry picking.

Made by goodgal996

I meant to add more information to the last post, but I didn’t have it handy, so we’ll discuss cherries more. The cherry variety that I am used to picking are what are known as Windsor cherries, they’re bright and plump and similar to a bing cherry. The cherries we picked, however, are a Napoleon, which are half yellow, half red. They are also a bit more tart than a Windsor cherry is, which I don’t really care for. I want a sweet cherry that is sweet. So, next time it’s off to wine country for the good cherries.

Now, the day didn’t totally suck, in fact, it was a pretty good day, despite the fact that due to my lack of height, Rob did the majority of the picking. I wasn’t climbing a ladder in an orchard that is on a hillside. Nope, I don’t want to crack my skull, especially with the balance issues I have from time to time. He enjoyed himself, so that is at least one thing we can do together we both enjoy.

After we paid for our pickings, I took him on a back road *cough*wrong turn*cough* trip through Newfield and was able to show him the covered bridge that’s in the town. We then headed into Ithaca with the plans of procuring food and going to Stewart Park. What really happened? We went to lunch at one of the billion Chinese restaurants, then went to Salvation Army to get Rob some jeans and shorts since he can’t seem to stop ripping the pockets off. From there, we finally headed to the park. That is, with a quick stop at Taco Bell for Fruitista Freezes. Yum. The KFC/Taco Bell in the valley doesn’t have them, so I had to take the chance while I could.

We spent quite a bit of time just sitting by the water, watching the sailboats and fish. It was really nice to just sit there and relax and enjoy the beauty of Cayuga Lake. I want to do it more often, but I doubt that there will be any more opportunities this summer now that his vacation is over. We’ll see, since he gets 2 days off every week and not all of them are for doctor’s appointments. Speaking of which, he has one this coming Thursday. Hopefully the doctor will do something about his eye, since it seems that the antibiotics and hot packs don’t do it. I think there is something a bit more serious wrong and I’m about to take him to his PCP if the eye doctor doesn’t do anything.

Anyway, I keep getting sidetracked reading/catching up on other stuff, so that’s the end of this post. More to come later.

Today is update day. What does that mean? This is the post where-in I update about what I’ve been up to. Last I posted anything significant was Monday. Egads. So here we go! The first update of however many I get around to writing.

Tuesday was deemed cherry day. This started out with me finding out that the Orchard that we assumed opened at 8am didn’t open until 10am. Kinda pissed me off because I got up at 7am for no reason. It’s alright though, it gave me time to sleep for another hour then take my pills, eat breakfast and chill for a bit. Around 9:30 we headed off toward Newfield to find the Orchard. We stopped at the Dollar General so I could grab some cheap camera batteries, but they were having issues with registers, so they were closed. My day really wasn’t going all that well, can ya tell? I said screw it and we headed on to the Orchard, spent an hour picking what I thought were fairly unripe cherries (I’ll expound on it later.) in hopes that they would ripen up later. We picked 6lb’s of cherries, which is WELL under the amount that I had planned.

When we went to pick cherries years ago, we always went to Hector, NY. They have huge orchards with nothing but cherries as far as the eye can see. Orchards of nothing but bright, plump, juicy, beautiful sweet cherries. What did we find Tuesday? Small, light colored cherries spread across 2 rows of trees, mixed in amongst a ton of apple trees. I was sorely disappointed when I pulled a cherry off the tree that was supposed to be sweet and wasn’t. It was also supposed to be ripe, but didn’t appear to be. When I got home with them, however, I learned that they were perfectly ripe, they just were not the variety I was used to. I am still disappointed because the whole experience of weaving through rows and rows of trees was not what it was the last time I went.

Ah well, perhaps next year I can go back to Hector and enjoy the beauty of weaving my way through a real orchard.