SNAPshots: Picking Grapes
Picking Grapes
Two-year-old Abigail Tripp looks through the mass of leaves under the arbor.
She eyes her target.
Reaching out with one hand, she reaches into the tangle of vines and grabs.
Abigail’s fingers close around a single grape, plucking it from the bunch still attached to the vine.
Her face afire with excitement, she plops her prize into her small bucket.
It might be better to pick them in bunches, however, picking them one at a time is easier for my daughter to understand.
For us, this is about a father spending time with his little girl outside on a beautiful August morning.
She relishes the time we spend together just as I am happy with the lessons she learns in the process.
By picking these grapes, she learns with time that grapes, like many foods, do not just come from a grocery store.
Fruits are grown and are gifts given by trees and shrubs within the natural world.
By picking fruits with us, we hope to teach her an appreciation and better understanding of the larger world surrounding us all.
But even if she does not grasp the concept as easily as she does the grapes just yet, she does learn that her father loves her enough to want to spend the time with her doing such things.
She also learns the joy of enjoying the fruits of our labor when sneaking a quick taste while the grapes were fresh from the vine.
The grapes we picked were set in a dish in the back part of the yard where they will attract fruit flies.
The fruit flies in turn will attract the hummingbirds — more lessons for my young one to enjoy and experience.
– Mike Tripp, photojournalist
Published in The News Leader on Sunday, Aug. 23, 2009.
