26.

Well.  We did it.  The morning was perfect with a blanket of clouds overbush.  We were almost solitary in our blueberry picking and got to work, tied buckets around our waists [for those of us with functioning waists] and plucked/dropped, plucked/dropped, plucked/ate, plucked/dropped.

I let out a squeak as a cluster of blueberries seemed rather squishy and wriggly, so I released my grasp to free a bright green frog who was probably a lot happier than I that I didn't keep tugging on the cluster of berries.

I explained to Clover and Azure as we began that we don't pick them if they are pink, or green, or purple.  Just blue and big.  Only pick the blue berries.

Clover responded, because blue is good for our bodies.

Yes, coming from nature, blue is very good for our bodies.  

She took it to heart and ended our picking session without a single berry in her bucket.

Which is fine.  Because the rest of us were hard at work.  Ryan confided in me he was a really good blueberry picker.

I agreed, and brought him along strategically. ;)

Because in the end, with the equation of 14 hands minus 7 mouths, we totaled...

Twenty six pounds of blueberries.  Twenty six.

What, you ask, are we going to do with 26 pounds of blueberries?  Eat them of course!

Olive and I made blueberry jam the very same day. 

[the view from up here]

Making jam the last time with Olive, I knew something needed to be done to reduce the sticky mess on the jars, so although it's rather random, this has saved me from cleaning sticky jars:

I put the jar right next to the bowl and had the lip hanging over.  Worked like a charm.  Except my jam didn't set up.  It might have something to do with the "little bit of extra water" Olive added because she said she spilled some while pouring it in the pot.  Hmm.

We've already emptied one jar on blueberry muffins and blueberry pancakes.

Ryan asked if I thought 26 pounds was excessive.  Probably. 

But it certainly is a blissfully blue kind of excessive.