Pick-Your-Own Farm Visits

My entry to 's 2010 June Saijiki Contest

1st: Strawberry Picking

Form: Tanka
Region: Northern America (US, Eastern Coast, right between where it snows quite a bit and where it doesn't at all)
Season: Summer
Category: The Season or Humanity
Kigo: "Purple Ripeness"
Description: around here, there's a summer activity known to lovers of organic fresh food and berries, which seems to be attended mostly by those who used to have gardens or village houses back where they came from: local farms are open for various fruit pickings - it begins with strawberries, and goes to tart cherries, blackberries, peaches, blueberries, raspberries, and so forth until it gets to apples; This year the favorable weather turned out fantastic strawberries - no way to get such sun filled sweetness at the stores.
----------------------------------------------------------

2nd: Sweet English Pea Picking

Form: Tanka
Region: Northern America
Season: Summer
Category: The Season or Humanity
Kigo: "sweet cocoons"
Description: another weekend on another farm; the thing about picking any sort of ripe berries - you have to develop a relationship with its shrubs, its thorns. It bites you, tricks you into thinking you came too early, that it has nothing to give you. But if you're attentive, and sit below its branches, and look up and within, you'll see a myriad of ripe gifts, and far fewer prickly appendages to drive you off. Now, while peas have no thorns, they also have no bright distinguishing color from its leaves as other vegetables or fruits do. Peas are hard to see - the pale silvery coating all over the plants plays with the eye; you have to train yourself to look for shapes, and unusual shadows to find the green chests full of round deliciousness. You still have to learn the plant in order to reap its fruit.