This morning I ate pancakes made with the blue berries picked near sea level on July 2^nd. To get our winter supply, since then we have had to move higher and higher into the mountains to find ripe berries. This is all for the good as far as Aki is concerned. Berry picking is a family affair.

Aki joins her other human and I halfway up a ski run where blue berries hang heavy and ripe. Her humans take turns throwing her Frisbee while we pick a gallon and a half of blues. Some berries drop when we touch them and I wonder, for the thousandths’ time, why birds are not hammering them. Wouldn’t birds do a great job delivering blue berry seeds in their scat? They would drop them here unlike the bears, who eat so many berries at a time that thousands of berry seeds are concentrated in each bear scat.