That second fall I made sure not to touch the bushes as far as pruning was concerned. They were bushing out nicely that summer and I dreamed of the next summer and all the wonderful fruit they would bear. One night late in the fall I wandered out to mulch the plants and noticed to my dismay that the blue berry bushes had been pruned!
I immediately went in and asked JJ and Art if they had actually tried to help me in the yard and trimmed those bushes. They both looked at me unknowingly and shook their heads; "No." Well if they didn't trim the bushes, did I somehow forget and trim them? How else could they have gotten pruned? I went back out and inspected the job. It was very neat and concise. Clean, sharp, angled cuts were at the ends of each branch with new growth. Finally it dawned on me. The rabbits! The rabbits trimmed my blue berry bushes!
Well, there was nothing I could do that year, so the winter passed and as soon as the ground thawed that spring I went out and got stuff to put up a little fence around my blue berry bushes. It wasn't pretty. In fact it was butt ugly! But if it was going to help me get my blue berries the next year, I could live with it. So there is stood. The posts like little green sentries against the potential intruders willing to eat away the next years crop. All seemed to go well that summer, I still got a few berries, but the real test would be in the fall to see whether or not the bunnies would try to trim them for me again.
All was well. No unwanted trimming, but for one or two branches that poked through the fence. Great! And that next spring I had several flowers that turned to wonderful blue berries. I got about a quart out of it. Contented that I had fixed the problem I just checked the blue berry "pen" intermittently over the summer to make sure the wire fence hadn't been breached.
Everything was going great. And this spring the flowers were amazingly abundant! Triumph! I was so excited to get the first long awaited harvest from my blue berry bushes! And there they are out there now, quarts and quarts of blue berries ripening on the branches in the warming summer sunshine. I was pretty proud of myself and the job that the fence was doing. I was so confident in that fence that I put another one up around my hap hazard garden I planted this year at the last minute. There they were. The ugly wire parameters around my gardens.
It was well worth the ugly to keep the bunnies at bay. After all, this past winter with record snowfall, I hadn't fenced my raspberries in because I'd never had a bunny problem with raspberries, but I guess with all the snow they were desperate and they ate every cane down to the snow line! So this year I won't have many raspberries. Seeing this and keeping it in mind as I gaze on the "iron wall" I've erected around my crops, I'm almost considering it art.
This past week we've had record rainfall. Sunday was particularly bad. So Monday I went out to check the status of my baby flowers and veggies. Most had weathered the storms. As I was admiring the blue berry crop, I noticed a patch of brown within the rusty red of the pine needle mulch. Weird, what was that? No way! There, inside the fenced in blue berry patch a bunny had built a little nest and within it lay six furry little baby bunnies!
Fine. I guess the bunnies get the last laugh. I just hope they don't get any designs about pruning my blue berry bushes this fall. I thought about grabbing them all and throwing them out, but I knew they'd probably be abandoned by their mother and die, and they were just so cute. So there they lie. I guess I'll leave the blue berry patch up to them this year.
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