Pick your own paradise

It is summertime in New England, and a nice hot one at that. Time to make the weekly Sunday morning trip to Easy Pickins Orchard, to gather up all of the fresh blueberries, peaches, eggplant (aubergine for you continental types), peppers, cukes, tomatoes and herbs you can carry.

Then you take your booty (in both senses of the word) home to fix yourself some farm-fresh grub. With tinto de verano in hand, why not whip up some Lebanese-style Stuffed Eggplant, or perhaps some chilled cucumber soup? Try that last one with some smoked salmon tartine.

One of the interesting things I have found is that, though I thoroughly enjoy what is made (mostly by Marissa, though I help - and do dishes) from these wonderful, fresh ingredients, I get just about as much pleasure out of the experience of picking them myself.

It is Sunday morning. My brain is slow, the humidity is rising, the world is turning at a snail's pace  and Monday is looming like a darkening cloud. My best friend and I get out of the car, in our summer hats and long-sleeve t-shirts, and trek through the dust, first to the blueberries.

Almost immediately my mind focuses and the picking morphs into a semi-meditation: "find the dark ones, tug on them lightly, if they don't give - leave them alone and move to the next bush." The next thing I know 45 minutes have passed and I am carrying two quarts of the sweetest fruit on the planet. I am sweaty, dusty, covered in leaves and twigs and completely at peace.

Then on to the vegetables.

This phenomenon - of enjoying the doing as much as or more than the results - is something I have really gotten into and recommend trying for yourself. You could go out for pizza - but it might be more fun to make it at home with your spouse and maybe even your kids. You could buy that high-end sound system and home theater - or you could learn to play the guitar. You know you've always wanted to play the guitar.

Another Sunday ritual is reading the New York Times. It is the most complete newspaper one can get in the US and whiling away the hours with it in my hand just feels good. This past Sunday we were reading while enjoying the satisfaction of having pulled live things from the earth in order to eat them when I came across this article. It is all about a couple who went from working just to pay for stuff to paring down to only 100 personal items each. They got rid of all of the stuff they had thought they needed to be happy - as well as about $30,000 in debt. And now they are indeed very happy. The article goes on to talk about exactly what I had been pondering - the satisfaction of doing rather than having.

So, I am not going to make a grandiose pronouncement, or challenge myself and others to give away everything but the toothbrush. I am going to try to derive even more satisfaction from my Sunday mornings and, hopefully, every other morning I get to wake up and choose to experience something new, or even something familiar.