Blueberries

It’s snowing here today and everything looks like a fairy wonderland. I’m not fully able to enjoy it because I need to go out later and Seattle is not known for its snow removal capabilities. Nevertheless, the snow makes all the gross fall detritus look clean and pristine, and the hundred-foot-tall firs look positively alpine. I can’t help but enjoy it.

Most of the plants in our yard have given up the ghost. They’re either perennials, ready to get through a long cold winter, or annuals, which have been harvested and thrown onto the compost pile. Everything looks just as a sleeping garden should. Tucked up and ready for a rest.

But not the blueberries. They’re out there, full of leaves, brashly gathering the snowflakes. I don’t understand why. I’ve never heard of blueberries keeping their leaves after the first frost, but mine do. That said, I haven’t done a ton of research on blueberries, other than knowing they like acidic soil.

The blueberry bushes were one of the first plants added to our garden. Long before we had raised beds, I brought my toddler to the garden center during their blueberry plant sale and bought six little bushes. I made Forrest dig some holes for us, and that was that.

For as long as we’ve had them, they should probably be bigger. Back at Forrest’s childhood home in Pennsylvania, the blueberry bushes were as tall as me. Ours are barely hip height, but they make up for that by giving us lots and lots of the most delicious berries.

It’s funny how that works sometimes, isn’t it? By many measures, these little blueberry bushes are a bit of a disappointment. We’ve been carefully watering them for years, making sure they don’t get choked out by blackberries or weeds, and putting compost on them every spring. They certainly haven’t exceeded my expectations.

Every year, we head out to a you-pick berry farm, ready to fill our freezer with plenty of berries to get us through the winter. And those berries are good. Quite good, really. But none of them compare just one of our pink lemonade berries.

The plant that seems the least impressive, the afterthought, the slow and steady tortoise - it’s also the giver of the rare treasure. And we do treasure those berries around here. It’s pretty rare for me even to taste one; the kids have gotten there first. There is never a bowl of those berries that sits on my counter; they’re all eaten on the way to the door.

So, as I look out at my foolish blueberry bushes, leaves covered in snow, I have to believe that there’s a method to the madness. In their own time, they’ll follow the crowd, drop their leaves, and get ready for another summer of the beauty and bounty that we are lucky enough to experience year after year.