The Taste of Summer

For me, summer tastes like freshly picked berries of all sorts. Strawberries, blueberries, raspberries and blackberries. I have been a berry picker since way back. Every time I pick a berry I am immediately brought back to childhood when life was much simpler, when I was young and free, without a care in the world.

I remember when my parents used to own a cottage resort on the lake, there was a small island that we would swim to that we called 'Blueberry Island', because it was covered in blueberries. Sometimes me and my mom would paddle boat out to the island but I highly doubt that many berries made it back home with us.

I get so excited when I see berries of any sort, I'm like a kid in a candy store. If I'm driving, I just have to pull over to pick them. I have to let my inner child out, as we all should.

People keep telling me to sell them, and they tell me how much money I'd make, but that never happens, they all end up in our bellies.

Now that I have a son of my own, not many berries make it to my mouth ( although I do sneak the odd one), he is always there waiting for me to hand them over for him to taste. He gets annoyed with me because I can't stop picking once I start, I keep saying "one more, just one more", but I can't stop at one more, two more or three more.

When I find a strawberry patch I am instantly brought back to the days when we used to go to Reekie's strawberry fields and pick buckets of big, juicy red berries. They have been closed for over ten years now but I still remember it like it was just yesterday.

All the memories of summer as a young child come rushing back to me. Spending entire days at the lake swimming, building sandcastles, and laying on the dock with my mom looking at the clouds and seeing what shapes we saw. They were simpler times, without all the technology and distractions of the world that we live in today.

We ran around barefoot, not having to worry about stepping on broken glass or needles like today's kids do. We caught frogs and tadpoles and watched the loons and otters play on the lake. I played with dock spiders and ate sand and ants (yuck).

I taught the cottagers' kids how to swim and enjoy nature as I did. Those were the best times of my life, I just didn't know it then. We are always in such a rush to grow up but little do we know, we need to enjoy every moment of our childhood because adulthood comes with so many responsibilities and worries.

I am always telling my son to enjoy this moment, to be in the moment fully and don't worry about the future, because we waste so much time focusing on the future that we forget to enjoy the present, and really - that's all that we have, this moment right here, right now.

I grew up in the country but now live in the city and life in the country is so much more peaceful and cleansing for the soul. We always had a garden growing up, and I can't begin to explain how rewarding that was and how much I miss it now that I live in an apartment building with nowhere to grow a garden. My heart yearns for a garden, for nature.

I want to go live in the country and live off the land like they did in the olden days, and have a true purpose and the sense of reward and fulfilment that you feel when growing your own food. This is my final goal in life, to go live off the homestead and have a completely edible yard and be self-sufficient.