Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Images from a burgeoning Blueberry Hill, Maine


The blue's but a mist from the breath of the wind
a line from the poem "Blueberries" by Robert Frost

I went for a walk up blueberry hill next to our house today and this is what I saw...ahhhhhhh!!! The whole hill is exploding with life and the blueberries are so beautiful...they are green with red edges, light blue, bright blue, very dark blue almost black (and I wonder if these are actually blueberries at all), pink, and light violet. Then there are white daisies, purple vetch, black eyed Syusan's and many other plants I don't know the name of.
The blueberries will be harvested soon - on or about August 1st -
this only happens every second year!

You can see why they used to be called starberries...


This looks like a tapestry to me...maybe from a design by William Morris, but my photo does not do it justice....
This picture is a little out of focus but I so love the way the blueberries look alongside the red berries (I don't know what they are...)





There is a huge patch of Black Eyed Susan's on the hill - how could I resist a photo?
... some junior berries getting ready to blue up!

In North America they are called wild blueberries or the old fashioned name is starberries - which I think is very sweet, in England and Ireland they can be called by any of the following names....whinberries, whimberries, whortleberries, blaeberries, fraughns, hurts, hurtleberries or the most popular, bilberry. Traditionally in Ireland the Sunday nearest to the first of August is 'Fraughan Sunday' when the wild blueberry is celebrated, this year that will be Sunday July 31st...what will you be making with your blueberries that day?

2 comments:

Lauren Hairston said...

They're gorgeous! I need to find a blueberry u-pick farm, stat!

The Starved Idiot said...

whortleberries! the name makes me chortle. absolutely gorgeous photos.