Why I Oughta...

Umm...yes please?!?  While out at Menards over the weekend, I came across this variety in the garden center.  If only, we had a place to plant it, right?  Maybe they'll have them again next year and we'll actually have a place to put something like this into the ground.  A guy can hope, right?

I had one of these tasty cans of Vander Mill Blue Gold Michigan Cider last week and it was a tasty combination of apples and blueberries.  Both from West Michigan.  Vander Mill looks to be from close to Grand Haven on the west coast of Michigan.  Further up the lake than Coloma/St. Joe's is, so I'm not to familiar with them or the place.  I've been drinking more and more ciders and based on the menu expansion, I'm not the only one.  I had this one over ice and that's the way I normally roll with ciders.  Maybe that's why I'm into them?  Can't have a craft beer on ice and not get sideways looks from the waxed mustache'd crowd.  But ciders?  Nobody bats an eye.

Our little blueberry bush is starting to throw off fruit this summer.  Mind you...not A LOT of it, but a handful of berries are ripe now and more are coming in soon.   The plant isn't doing as well as it did last year - see the post here - but I think the birds have gotten to some of the fruit this year. This year has been bad for just about all of our garden.  I haven't been tending to it as close to other years, but I've noticed that while the pumpkin vines are going crazy, the tomatoes are struggling.  Anyone else feel like their tomatoes are lagging behind other years?  Is is the lack of heat?

We've been picking one or two strawberries off our little plants almost every other day the past few weeks.  This morning, I went out and peeked at the blueberry plant and it had some ripe ones that came off the branch so easily. I planted this bush just about a year ago and it started to pay off in this small amount this year.  I had to put a small fence around the bush as it kept getting eaten by rabbits (the bush) and that was causing it some stress.  The berries last year were all picked away by birds, so this year the fence helped big time. Nat wants more, so I'm going to see if I can find another few bushes and plant them - permanently - in the garden.

While it isn't going to be a bountiful harvest, it is looking like we're going to indeed get some blueberries this year off of our bush.  I netted the plant this year to try to fend off the birds and it looks like it is working. Here's the first post when I put this particular bush in the backyard .