Asparagus is the tip of the spear, rising when spring first whispers at warmth. Those delectable first fern shoots are now long gone, allowed to grow to their natural man-height, a riot of delicate whiskers and poisonous berries.
This week, I'll be gently digging out my overwintered garlic. Their great-great-grandmother bulbs were Trader Joes organics, which I bought five years ago to plant rather than eat. They're an indeterminate softneck variety, which I plant copiously in early fall. Last year I got 25 bulbs, and as I'm of the "triple the garlic" persuasion in any recipe, they go to good use. This year, I'm hoping for thirty out of two four-by-eight beds. It's the most I've ever grown, and I may even try intercropping this year, as Nosferatu's Bane seems to ward off early season deer depredations.
While the garlic hangs dangling in the shade of our carport to cure, I'm also turning my attention to the blueberry bushes in front of my house. They're a twelve year old planting, and at this point every year they're fat with bunches of ripening blueberries. Hundreds of berries hang heavy on the bush, and as they blush green to pink to lavender, I'm always convinced we'll maybe this year have enough for a pie.
Until the grey catbirds arrive, that is. Unlike the local mockers that have taken up regular residence in one of our boxwoods, catbirds aren't seen much around my garden most of the year. But when the blueberries arrive, it's a catbird feeding frenzy.
Now, I don't mind sharing. Setting aside something for our avian friends is a fine Mary Poppins thing to do. For a few years, I'd tried putting "bird netting" over the bushes. But "bird netting" required building a frame, without which the mockingbirds and catbirds just ate the berries right through the mesh. Then I tried putting small fine mesh bags around individual bunches of berries, leaving others for the birds. This worked for one half of one season.
But unlike our fractious, combative, disposable sparrows, who'll also feast upon the berries but were clueless about how to circumvent the bags, catbirds aren't morons. Like their mockingbird cousins, they're inquisitive and adaptable creatures, and they quickly figured out how to pull those mesh bags off.
For the last few years, I've gotten no more than a couple of handfuls of berries, and the catbirds have feasted.
So this year, I tried a new tack. I covered three quarters of my plants with some drawstring fine mesh bags large enough for me to stand in. But not all, never all.
Do not harvest to the edge of your fields, as the Law puts it, and that applies to humans and catbirds alike. That, I thought, will surely do it. They'll go for the easy pickings, and we'll be copacetic.
After putting the nets on, the very first thing that happened?
I netted a catbird. Glancing up from my laptop "office" by the kitchen window, I saw a wild fluttering of grey wings inside the netting. Rather than eating some of the dozens of ripening berries I'd left easily available, it set hungry eyes on the portion I'd set aside for myself.
The net being fine mesh, the persistent little critter wasn't tangled up at all. It had just figured out a way to nose through the inadequately tightened drawstring opening, at which point it realized that getting out was going to be a little more challenging. It flapped around in a panic, the berries forgotten.
I wandered out, and after opening up the netting, with some encouragement got it to fly away, meowing anxiously.
Don't get greedy, little birds. Don't get greedy.
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