Terrapin Turtle, Blueberry Picking

This has been a real Eastern Shore time over the last few days. I definitely have "sand in my shoes" with these two activities.

 Sand in your shoes is the Eastern Shore way of stating your heart is here to stay, and you are living the Eastern Shore of Maryland way of life. My two activities in this essay are two traditional shore activities. First I went blueberry picking at the Garden of Eden, Pemberton Plantation in what I think is Quantico, Md..   Boy, they have some mighty fine berries. It is difficult not to eat your way through that plantation! The whole berry picking thing has an interesting aspect to it. You hear all sorts of people picking and eating as you work your way through the grounds, but you don't really come upon anybody because the place is pretty big. When you look closely you can find people under the bushes picking the bottom of the bush, working in pairs to cover both sides of the same bush, and yet others who have given up and just sat down on the ground for some relief from the work  It is fun work however, not without sensuous rewards to the palate. As you can see from the photos, the blueberries are very beautiful, in addition to tasty.

My second Eastern Shore tradition is that I came home to a female Terrapin digging a hole in my yard to drop eggs into. She was completing her hole, which looks like it was drilled into the ground, when I drove into the garden. It was about four to six inches deep and there was a small pile of sand behind it. I felt very guilty disturbing her, but she picked a tire track in the driveway to dig her hole, and it was going to be driven over multiple times in a day. I marched over to check her out, and she was rather shy and reticent. She realized that it was not the isolated location she had assumed when I showed up with my camera, and photographed her as if she were a super model. It is June, a bit late for some egg laying, May or earlier in June is the usual time, but if she wanted to lay eggs in my high and dry yard, that was fine with me....She didn't, she picked her self up and moved elsewhere, but not before I took some shots of her. Note the claws in the first photos, they definitely must aid in digging holes.Here are the additional photos...

A Complete Introduction to Turtles and Terrapins.