Blueberries, blue water: August 17

On Tuesday, Pia had to go to work, but Kari said he would take us out to look for blueberries. We had no great hopes of success, because it has been such a dry season. The blueberries we had already seen were few and far between.

But Kari is a cunning chap, and knows some good spots. Off we went down some dirt roads. Kari said there were supposed to be houses built here, but development plans had been put off. So, there was no groomed forestry land. There was good old weedy, dense undergrowth - and, somehow, it was damp! I imagine in an ordinary year it would be like a swamp here. But this year it certainly delivered the goods.

We had a large bucket, and a smaller one, and some special combed scoops purpose built for dragging through the berrie bushes and scooping up the stuff by the litre. Kari said you could fill the whole vast bucket in 20 minutes in Lapland. It took us about 3 hours, but we were happy to wander about, enjoying being outside.

What impressed me was the smell. Not only pine trees, but some beautiful perfumed shrub released odours when you tromped through it after the berries. How good can this get, I thought!
(Note the childrens' purple mouths. Not all berries made it into the buckets!)

Clever Kari managed to find some more mushrooms, but not chantarelles this time. Check out his birch-bark mushroom basket, made for him by a friend. (It is divided into four sections, for different sorts of mushroooms.) When we got back, we had to sieve the berries, because we got a fair amount of leaves and other detritus in the scoopers. Then we put some berries in a pie, and froze the rest, ready for winter. Pia was very pleased that we had found so many in a bad year.

After dinner, Kari went off to direct his male choir. Pia had a children's sailing club to run. We went down to watch, and our kids managed to get some spare boats, too. Wayne and I went for a little row in the club tinnie. It was a beautiful evening.