"Time to get ready to go pick strawberries," I announced after Maggie and Ollie, Juan the Gardener's visiting grandchildren finished up their breakfast of made-from-scratch blueberry pancakes. Ollie liked his pancakes with just a bit of butter spread on top ("even the corners") and requested his own small bowl of maple syrup for dunking each bite. Maggie asked for seconds.
I was anxious to get us all going. The weather forecast had called for rain and I had visions of endless games of hide n' seek, or worse, getting trapped inside the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.
"Are we there yet?" Ollie asked after we had turned out of the driveway onto the main road.
"Not quite," we laughed.
"How much longer?" Maggie asked.
"About 20 minutes," Juan the Gardener aka Yeh-Yeh replied.
"How much is that?"
"About as long as your Flowertop video."
"That's the stupidest movie ever," Ollie grumbled from his booster seat. "Only two-year-olds watch it." (The twins are five.)
"Ollie and I are Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn," said Juan the Gardener.
"Who are they?" Maggie asked.
"Boys who go on adventures," he explained.
"Well, I'm Mary Poppins," Maggie said. "And she's magic."
We met Elizabeth at the farm and she guided us down to the long, neat rows of strawberries. On the way, we stopped a few times to kick a soccer ball for Bob the Border Collie. Elizabeth explained that we were to pick only the berries that were bright red all the way around; we were to examine them carefully, leaving the ones with white tips or those partly orange for another day. We picked on both sides of our row, wandering off occasionally into adjacent ones and needing to be summoned gently back once or twice. While Juan bent to search beneath the leaves, Oliver danced back and forth, popping berries into his mouth. Maggie and I brought up the rear.
"Is this a good one?" Maggie would ask, before gently plucking each one off its stem.
"It's perfect," I said.
As we picked, it began to rain, a soft drizzle at first, then harder.
"Let's go!" Juan called, so we gathered our trays of berries and raced back up the hill.
"When we get back can we first cozy up and then have strawberry smoothies and strawberry milkshakes and strawberry jam and watch the rest of Mary Poppins?" Oliver asked.
"I'm not sure we have enough berries for jam," I said, "But, I could make strawberry crisp."
"Then can we first cozy up and then have strawberry smoothies and strawberry milkshakes and strawberry crisp and watch the rest of Mary Poppins?" Oliver asked.
"Sure," we laughed.
"Ollie is eating all the berries!" Maggie said.
"Here, Mags, you can have some," Ollie offered.
"So then," Ollie continued, "Can we follow my plan when we get home? Can we follow it exactly?"
"Yes," we said.
"What time is it?" Juan yawned.
"Just after 10," I yawned back. "10am."
