Bilberries

Last year was a brilliant bilberry harvest and we were out in the forest picking litres and litres. Even after eating the berries most mornings for breakfast, all through the winter and spring, we still have plenty left in the freezer.
This year the harvest is nowhere near as good thanks to the unusual weather with weeks of drought, followed by weeks of rain. The berries stayed small and sour until the rain came, and then they ripened and went a bit watery, all within a few days. So these few berries may be THE harvest this year.
The bushes were growing into our parking space so I was cutting them back, to get a bit more room for the camper van. I just couldn't throw the bushes onto the compost heap with the berries in place so I picked all the berries from those bushes I was discarding.
In the evening we got a phone call from a neighbour who had just celebrated his birthday. He had a lot of food, wine and cake left and did we fancy helping to eat it up? It sounded good to us and we spent the evening with three neighbours, mostly chatting about other people who live in and around the village. One neighbour was born here, the other moved here when he was only four years-old, and the third one arrived directly after university.  We discovered a lot of stuff about long dead neighbours and a fair bit about the ones who were still alive. I wonder what they say about us when we aren't there :-)