Blueberry Bonanza

 The blueberry bushes Cindy planted several years ago in grow bags out behind the garage have been busily producing a bumper crop of big, fat, juicy berries this year.  When Cindy's sister Mary was here a couple of weeks ago, we had fresh berries for breakfast many times, raiding the bushes many times over during her visit.  

Right Off The Vine

The neighbors who are farming the raised beds also filled their buckets several times.  Then they made a blueberry cobbler and brought it down for us to enjoy.  Yum!

Yummmm!

What a great way to get antioxidants!

Of Course...

Of course, we're not the only ones around here who love blueberries.  Most of our blueberry bushes are protected by Cindy's anti-varmint panels from attack from the ground and by bird netting from depredations by marauding California Towhees, who like a little fruit with their bird seed.

The three bushes in pots in front of the garage, on the other hand, have no protection.  I was looking out the window the other day and saw the leaves of one of those bushes being agitated as if by the wind, but there was no wind blowing.

And then I noticed that Big Mama, the matriarch of the California Ground Squirrel population, seems to have produced her annual brood serially this year instead of all at once as she usually does.

That means that she now has some adolescent juvenile delinquents as well as a couple of very cute baby squirrels just out of the den, and she's teaching all of them where the free bird seed buffet is located.

Big Mama and Brood

Unfortunately, it also means that the juveniles have started ranging a bit further out and have discovered....Blueberries!

Fortunately, we collected most of the blueberries from the the garage bushes before the squirrels finally stripped them, and we also had a very good yield from the bushes in the protected area, too.

"I Found My Thrill....On Blueberry Hill..."

It's Blueberry Season!

We now have our original four blueberry bushes and three more Cindy got from her friend Janet when she moved.  All of the bushes have been flowering and producing berries for months, and now the berries are ripening.

Some varieties of blueberry require more "chill hours" than our San Diego climate has, but there are several varieties that do very well here.

Good thing we love blueberries.

Good-bye To Cousin Itt

Cindy planted an ornamental grass plant in a container next to the garage door  a couple of years ago.

It became pretty bushy and I started calling it "Cousin Itt" because it reminded me of the character in the Addams Family.

Cousin Itt flourished for a while, but unfortunately began to dry out and shrivel up recently, so Cindy pulled it out and replaced it with some new blueberry plants.

That's fine with me; neither we nor the bees eat the ornamental grasses, but we do like blueberries.

"Hold This....Again"

Our blueberry bushes are currently loaded with blossoms and unripened berries.  That makes the El Nino storm we are told will arrive tomorrow a matter of concern; we don't want to lose those berries.

So Cindy, a former Girl Scout, was prepared to take measures to protect them from a hard rain by putting a cover of shade cloth over the bed by clipping it to some wire frames she had installed a couple of months ago.  We pulled the cloth over the frame and it worked beautifully.

I think it should work as long as the wind doesn't get too bad; there are certainly enough clothes pins securing the cloth to the wire frame.

Too Good To Be True

Avocado Tree

Well, we should have known that it was too good to be true when we thought the California Ground Squirrels had all been wiped out by the large Gopher Snake a couple of weeks ago.  We were actually feeling sorry for the squirrels.  We should have known that the apparent Lone Survivor was actually just an advance scout.

Yesterday Cindy saw Big Mama and a smaller squirrel out under the bird feeder stuffing themselves with birdseed and thought, "Aw, how cute they are."

Later we were sitting on the patio and Cindy said, "Why is the top of the avocado tree vibrating?"  We went tearing out to it and saw Big Mama inside the the plastic fencing around the avocado tree; she panicked when she saw us and swiftly hauled her ample posterior up over the fencing and scrambled off into the shrubbery, leaving behind her a couple of broken branches on the tree.

That small tree has been struggling ever since we planted it last year and recently something has been eating the new leaves that had set on it.  We suspected that it was a June Bug, but since we caught Big Mama in the act it's pretty clear that at least some of the damage is attributable to her.

However, worse was yet to come; when we returned later in the afternoon, we found a note from the neighbors informing us that they had seen the squirrels inside the bird netting around the blueberry bushes.

That's when we found out that they had eaten most of the blueberry crop.

What's Left of the Blueberry Crop

We're not thinking they're so cute now.

Blueberries

Blueberry Plants In Grow Bags

Our four blueberry bushes have been producing berries at a tremendous clip this year; big, juicy, luscious berries.  We've had blueberries on cereal, in pancakes, in muffins and layered in a wonderful parfait, too.

Naturally, we're not the only ones who appreciate the anti-oxident properties and sweet taste of blueberries, but we had hoped that, with fewer ground squirrels around this year, they would be safe from the varmints.  

Blueberries with Netting

But, of course, the birds like them, too.  So Cindy added some bird netting around the grow bags the blueberries are in, and put reflective strips on the netting to let the birds know it's there so they won't get tangled in the netting.

One bush was almost done producing berries, so she left that one outside the netting so the birds could have some, too.

Who doesn't like fresh blueberries?

  

Carrots

Our Carrots

Cindy brought in an armload of carrots straight from the garden the other day.  

It seems that, whatever the item of produce, there is either nothing much or else lots and lots of it.  

We've also been waiting and waiting for the blueberries on our bushes to ripen, and now we're up to our kneecaps in blueberries.

I guess it's a good thing we both love carrots.  And blueberries.

Blueberry pancakes, yum.

Ha! We WinThis Round!

Our Blueberries!

We decided to save our New Year's Day champagne until today so we could drink it while we watched the Rose Parade.

So Cindy went out and gathered the ripe blueberries off the vines to put them in the champagne.

There were only four of them, but they were big, sweet, juicy, and, best of all--we beat the squirrel to them!  That's what you get for hibernating, varmint.

So we win this round.

First Blueberries!

Blueberries Getting Ripe

We've been watching the blueberries on our three bushes as they've set on and gradually started turning blue.

Today Cindy found three that had fallen off the bushes, so we washed them off and tried them.  They were still a little tart, but they're our blueberries.

Frisky Squirrels

Surveying The Yard

I guess it was appropriate for Valentine's Day yesterday that the ground squirrels were feeling a bit frisky.

First one of them climbed up on one of the blueberry bush containers and seemed to be surveying the surrounding yard.  The squirrels have been stuffing themselves on the birdseed and suet the birds drop from the feeders.  We have a baffle on the feeder pole, so they can't get directly into the feeders, although, unlike tree squirrels, these squirrels don't seem to be great climbers.

Squirrel Romance?

He must have liked what he saw from his perch, because he was soon joined by a second squirrel and they chased each other around in the decomposed granite for a while.

Unfortunately, this probably means there will be the pitter patter of little squirrel feet around the yard before long.  Bet they'll like blueberries, too.