Blueberry Harvest

Day 301: At its inception, the Berry Pen contained three blueberry bushes. Oddly, the native was the first one to bite the dust, and that after only producing two or three crops. A standard-size commercial cultivar lasted another two or three years, and then it too simply gave up the ghost. The survivor is a dwarf variety called "Jelly Bean," and what it lacks in quantity, it makes up for in diameter. The berries are just as sweet as the candy which gives it its name, and fresh off the bush, sun-warm and squishy, there's no better snack on a hot afternoon. I have to keep the bush netted in early season because the Juncos are overly fond of the nectar in the flowers  They snip them off right at the stem with their little scissors-like beaks! Strangely enough, they're not at all interested in the fruit.