Cherries, Or, Let's Pay a Million Bucks for a Few Buckets

Growing up, my family spent one summer day each year picking cherries near the Finger Lakes. My brothers, sisters, and I have many memories wrapped around climbing cherry trees; picking, gobbling, and throwing cherries; lunching on ham and cheese sandwiches and Mom's famous red punch from the cooler teetering in the back of the station wagon; picking wild blackberries in between the hillside vineyards; and stopping at every last historical marker that my Dad spied along the way.

We've continued this tradition in a spotty fashion over the last few years with our little family, and the girls are forming their own memories of the same.  The amount we handed over for our buckets this year nearly knocked me unconscious, though, so I've warned the girls that this may be the last of the memory-making.   I'm a scrooge.

Hot sun, sweaty children, pounds of cherries in our bellies.  I took these pictures right before we left to prove that we had come.


First in line are these pictures of a sweet and sweaty little girl who tottered beside me.  Isn't she darling?

Then I realized it was Zekie-Boy.  Time for a haircut, buddy.

He discovered a great love of cherries on this day.

Everyone except Mildred and the papa squeezed in one frame:

I also documented this overtired and ill-behaved munchkin I found in the orchard.

I think she ate her weight in cherries and a few besides.

The girls had brought books along, as usual, but only Millie's had the distinction of being nibbled by a genuine bookworm.

After picking, we used our last Five Guys gift card to treat ourselves to burgers and fries.  (Wouldn't you?)  I removed Ezekiel's pigtails to make him presentable and combed his hair.  He thought he looked hysterical, and he was right.  (Philip Seymour Hoffman, watch out.)