Tis the season

We've got four blueberry shrubs in our orchard and, as it's now the harvesting season, it's now a constant battle between me and the birds as to who gets to the ripening crop first each morning.

Last year the birds won hands down.

So far this season I'm winning. And the noise the songbirds (especially the aggressive wrens) make as they watch beady-eyed from the peach and pear trees. It's as if they know what I'm doing and are irritated. Sometimes, their protests are so loud, I feel as if I'm in Hitchcock's The Birds.

And what a bounty. We've got three different varieties and the shrubs are so heavy with clusters of fruit that their sinewy branches dip toward the ground. I've already collected four pints of blue berries that look as if they have been dipped in the finest of talcum powder or kissed by the morning mist.

Blueberries are a singularly American delicacy--and choc-a-bloc with vitamin C. They are delicious to eat off right off the branch or can be made into jams, pies or,my favorite, cobbler and served with vanilla ice-cream.

Off I go a-picking.

Scents and other simple pleasures

Every morning now I sit on the deck and drink my second cup of coffee after returning from the gym. I do this because this is the time in spring in Pennsylvania--most of the northern East coast really--when the Russian Olives and lilacs are in bloom and the breeze is heady with their thick sweetish scent. For having such small trumpet-shaped flowers, the Russian Olive--it's a shrub that grows wild here--sure packs a heck of a punch.

Just before dusk, I'm back in the garden--watering this time, because we hoed all the patchy parts of the lawn which the weeds claimed as theirs and spread some grass seed. It looks kind of ugly now but that'll change in a few weeks.

Sometimes, when I'm working in the garden covered in dust and sweat and sneezing because of the pollen, I stop full of amazement at myself. As a kid back in Ireland and an adolescent, I despised gardens and gardening, didn't give a shit about flowers and things. Now I'm out breaking my back to get it all beautiful and in shape just so we can sit out on the deck in the evenings, drink wine or sometimes beer, and listen to the finches, wrens woodpeckers and cardinals in chorus. We even put red flowers in the pots on the deck so we'll have humming birds stopping by in mid-summer to drink the nectar. Times sure change.

On an unrelated note, Debra Hamel of Book Blog has a new site called Twitterlit up and running. It gives the opening lines of published novels (mine is currently her first pick of the day, which pleases me very much) and if it tweaks people's interest to know what works they are, it then links to Amazon.com so you can investigate. Here's thelinkif you'd like to check it out when you get a mo'.