Blueberry Tears

I lost a second blueberry bush to the weed eater today. This time I sat down and cried. It is too late in the season to replant. It’s too late to find blueberry bushes in the store at any rate.

First, the lawn mower got one. After that I put sticks next to the ones on the ends of the row so that the lawn mower would go around them. The next time the yard guys showed up, they chopped down what was left of the injured bush with a weed eater. That time I saw what happened while they were still here and pointed out that they had killed my blueberry plant. I explained what the sticks were about. I hoped that was all I needed to do.

Alas, it was not. Just this morning I did say to my neighbor that I needed to put pine straw around my blueberries and peaches to make sure that they didn’t look like weeds, but it was hot and cloudy, and I didn’t think anyone was coming to work in the yard today. I just procrastinated.

By the time I realized they were working in the yard despite the rain, i decided that I didn’t want to get wet or get in the way. I also assumed that since the last weed eater incident was just two weeks ago, and the other bushes looked big enough to be clearly distinguishable from weeds, I could afford to risk waiting on the pine straw.

Wrong. And now it is too late to do anything. A second bush was cut off at the ground with a weed eater. It was too young to bounce back from that. The roots haven’t had time to really establish themselves.

This is so disheartening. The blueberries were the part of my new garden I was proudest of getting started. Now, not only have two been killed needlessly, but they were two of the same variety. The two remaining are of another variety, but they are of the same variety as each other…the variety by the way that didn’t produce anything this year. The ones I’ve lost were going to be the early producers.

I know I don’t always do what I’m supposed to do for my plants. I don’t even always understand what I’m supposed to do. I know I don’t have the best soil to work with. I haven’t been confident at all that my plants would survive.

But I was doing better than expected, and the plants were showing more promise than expected.

And then comes the weed eater.

It’s so sad.