You're turning violet, Violet

This weekend Bend hosted the Cascade Cycling Classic and the Summer Festival, and a nationally reknown Quilt Show was in nearby Sisters. So we left town.

Saturday morning I grabbed some buckets, some bags and my boy and we drove 125 miles (200 km) to a u-pick blueberry farm in the valley. (Only tiny, wild berries grow in plenty in Central Oregon: strawberries, huckleberries, serviceberries, currants. And juniper berries.) It was awesome. Blake was awesome. He's such a joy.

He talked nonstop the whole time. Sometimes he was conversing with me, but mostly he was just talking. He talked about his movie, about his daycare, about how funny it is to put a bucket on one's head. He entertained himself for about half an hour in the car with his bucket: I have a yellow head! I have a helmet on my head! I'm hiding! If Sasha were here, she couldn't find me! Then he tore the handle off and spent another 15 minutes expressing concern about his ability to pick berries if he didn't have a bucket with a handle.

The Fitchett blueberry farm is just about an acre, neat rows of old bushes dripping with ripe berries. It's bounded on one side by a blackberry thicket and on two sides by a stand of cedars. The Willamette river flows behind the cedars. It was the most fragrant place! Also quiet. When we lived in Portland I picked berries on Sauvie Island on farms that people operate for a living. The Fitchett farm is more dilettante. Pick your berries and put your money in a jar. No one was there but Blake and me.

My three-year-old son spent two hours picking berries. Imagine! Mostly he picked them and ate them, or picked them and threw them into spider webs (he is fascinated by spider webs at the moment), but I know he saved quite a few because between us we picked eight pounds (3 1/2 kg) of blueberries. Eight pounds!

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Did you know that blueberries are filled with cheese and bananas? Blake, who squished quite a few, told me so. If you squish some you'll see that he's right.

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Sasha spent the day with her dad. When we got home, she was perched quite happily in her high chair, eating grapes and Cheerios and yammering at her pop. The kitchen was spotless. C. said Sasha was happy as could be all day, played by herself a lot, napped for two hours. When she saw me she was pleased but, you know, no big deal. Hey Mom, glad you're back! Now Dad, as I was saying...

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I don't mean to say that my children are perfect. Blake whined for the final half hour in the car ride there, and on the way back had a 20-minute meltdown that ceased only when I stopped in a restaurant that has a train running on a track near the ceiling. Sasha woke up from her nap just pissed, C. said. She yelled from the bike trailer on the ride to his sister's house.

But those are small things. On the whole, we all had a blast.