One whole ripe blueberry!

And more to come.

Spring flowers are feasts for bees

In years past, mid-April has been when the crocus peak, but the crocuses are already done. This year, most of the flowers are at least two weeks early. In fact, so much has been flowering in the last week, I’m having trouble keeping up. The bees are having a great spring. So while they are […]

Sometimes red means go put on a sweater

The first bits of autumn are hitting the yard. There’s red in the leaves on the Burning bush. There’s red in the leaves on the blueberries. There’s red in the leave of the Virginia creeper. Are there oranges and yellow? Probably, but what I notice is the red warning of the coming cold.

A darker harvest

Sounds like a cheesy vampire novel, but all I see are deep colored berries entering the mix: black raspberries, blueberries, and darkest of all, mulberries. Oh yeah, the strawberries are still ripening, too. Whenever I pick black raspberries, I always remember a story I read as a child, “Green Black Raspberries are Red.” This is […]

A raspberry and a blueberry from the bees

Today’s harvest was brought to you by the bees. Honeybees and small carpenter bees in the raspberries. Bumblebees, too, but they’re too fast for me to get a good picture. I caught a Lasioglossum bee in the flowerhead of one of the scallions I planted last fall. And the coriander flower is showing off one […]

Blueberries, uncovered

The sun came out, I cut down and dug up some grass, and uncovered my blueberry plants. It looks like they’re even setting fruit, but there’s still some clusters of bell-like, white flowers. So, as promised, here they are.

Berry seasonal

I like how the berry season overlaps. The first raspberry is ripe…

Next fruits

Blueberries are ripe. Mulberries are ripe. One or two of them, anyway. With blueberries you have to watch for that greyish blush to cover the deep blue color. I planted lowbush blueberries, because I like the smaller, more intense flavor of the little berries. This means a lot of stooping to pick these berries, almost […]

Blueberry blossoms (say that three times fast)

The blueberries aren’t as easy to see as the fruit trees, being lowbush berries, but they’re picking up the pace of flowering. Lots of little white blossoms hanging close to the ground. Here we are, little miner bees, here we are!

Obligatory leaves

It being fall, the leafy colors are all around. Aside from the burning bush, the other bits of red leaves come from the blueberry bushes. What do you know? Just as advertised. But these are lowbush, not highbush blueberries, so they’re not going to be much of a stand-in for any euonymi.