Gooseberry Huckleberry

When I was first learning to play the piano, my teacher taught different musical rhythms using the syllables of fruits and berries. For example, "apple" was two 8th notes, "gooseberry" was a dotted 8th note followed by two 16th notes, and "huckleberry" was four 16th notes. These are all common musical occurences, but I grew up wondering if she was making these up. What is a gooseberry? And a huckleberry??

Yesterday I discovered what a huckleberry was, having picked almost a gallon of them in the mountains with my husband and his extended family.

This is a huckleberry. It's a lot like a blueberry, but smaller, darker, and a little more tart. They're excellent fresh, for pies, muffins, jams... anything you would normally do with a delicious berry!

It was a glorious time. We brought our little Smokey Joe and grilled some bratwursts there, and had smores around the campfire after dark. Yes... we did bring the hand-crank ice cream maker and yes, it was delicious. The stars in the sky were innumerable.


And these are cows that we saw on our way to Mt. Adams where said huckleberries were picked. There were about 50 more cows in a line facing the same direction (not coming in for food or anything... just standing there), but I don't have a wide angle lens to prove it.

Hmmm... I wonder what a gooseberry is.