Bluberries!
I love summer in Oregon. We always enjoy a crop from a few blueberry plants we have, and thankfully you don't have to be particularly gifted to grow good fruit here. It does very well on its own. But this summer is special. This summer's crop is remarkable. And it's not just our patch. This year's cherry crop is the most abundant in years. Things are so fat, the birds don't even bother with a suburban harvest like our. And our blueberries just keep getting fatter and sweeter each day. As I was picking a few, I thought about this fruitfulness. Why this year? I'm not a farmer, but I think it has to do with extremes. We had a very cold wet winter—one that gave us 20" of snow on the valley floor. That hasn't happened in a hundred years. Then Summer came hot and fast. It was the extremes of wet cold and hot dry that stimulated our sweet bounty. Not to put too fine a point on it, but Christian "fruit" is like that. The love, joy, peace, patience, ge...