Simple Pleasures

Our foreheads and upper lips were already moist with perspiration and it was only 9:00 a.m. I'm not sure why I was so inclined to hurry a one year old and four year old through their breakfast and skip their morning cartoons altogether for a morning of picking cherries off trees, perhaps it was the child in me.

The woman behind the counter told me all the trees near the farm were picked. I would have to walk a while to get some good ones. No problem. I had a bottled water and a stroller what else would I need. Nothing I found out. Though Jacob insisted that "he did not like cherries" (although he never tried one), he had an amazing time stretching his little body as far as he could to reach a plum ripe bite size piece of heaven. He was an excellent assistant, directing me to where he could not reach but wanted to. With a child's eye, pointing out all the wonders of nature: a beautiful stick lying in the grass; a bug buzzing around a decaying piece of fruit on the ground.

Little Birdie (as I call her) was not unsure of the taste, one little "sample" and "ma ma" (more, more) was her favorite word of the day.

For the artist in me there was inspiration everywhere: The plump shiny red fruit; the odd angles of the old branches heavy with weight and time. The pealing red barn and the emerald fields of growing goodies. What a morning.

What are your favorite simple pleasures of summer?