Fruit!

BLUEBERRIES!

I never cease to be amazed by nature. I get really excited to see things blossom and fruit. Yes, I've done this before, and yes, it is still amazing. The miracle of life. When I first see the signs of fruit, I usually throw my hands in the air and shout, "Blueberries!" or "Cucumbers!" like Tom Hanks shouting "Fire!" in the movie Castaway. I do this every year.

Last spring, I planted two blueberry bushes (of different varieties) at the base of my porch, which is partly shaded, so I wasn't sure how they would fare this year. One of my plants has done just fine--there are plump berries all over it. Yay!

The other bush only produced a few berries, which dried up right away. I don't know why. Does one get more sun than the other? Is one variety more resilient than the other? It would've made sense to label them, but I never got around to it, so I don't know which is which. But I read that the two varieties I have (Bluecrop and Bluejay) have different colors of leaves in the fall, so I'll get back to you on that.

Patio cucumbers growing ... on my patio! Yay! I may not need to self-polinate this year. I mean hand-polinate.

CUCUMBERS!

And strawberries! I'm not expecting much from this everbearing crop. (Shady yard.) I grew them in containers on my porch last year, and they grew pretty well, but chipmunks and squirrels and slugs and who knows what else ate them. I tried putting chickenwire fencing (*chicken* fencing, not chipmunk fencing--that was my mistake!) around them, but it didn't keep out the little critters.

In the fall, I planted them in the ground so the roots wouldn't freeze over the winter. They came back nicely, and are producing fruit. I'm sure we're in for another battle with the critters.

STRAWBERRIES!