Queen Victoria's Knickers


I love blueberry plants in all the seasons. I love their spring flowers, with tiny little scallops, and a neat green dot to every scallop. They remind me of Victorian pantaloons. I also love them in Autumn when their leaves turn red and yellow and orange. I would plant them in the garden just for those features alone.


Which is lucky really, because my dozen beautiful blueberry bushes are still only knee high after two years, and have produced, oh about fifteen blueberries this summer. Very nice blueberries, as you can see. Quality, but certainly not quantity.

It is also lucky that we live within half an hour's drive of the most divine PYO blueberry farm. Last week, when I got bored with letting down the hems of school dresses and covering books, we went and picked ten kilograms of blueberries. A year of porridge toppers and muffin stuffers. We have been going to this farm since The Girl was a wee toddler, and have seen the bushes grow from waist height, to towering giants. The rows now form green tunnels, and picking blueberries is like gleaning food from a trackless jungle.  Sometimes there are tiny frogs. Hunting and gathering at its best.

Still, if blueberries weren't called blueberries, and I were the Grand High Poobah in charge of naming plants, I would call them 'Queen Victoria's Knickers', after the flowers.

PS Have you noticed that the blueberries still have tiny scallops at the base of the fruit, just like the flowers?

Comments

Anonymous said…
They are so pretty! I know I probably stand alone on this but, whispering quietly, I don't like blueberries. Even if you changed their name, I wouldn't like them.
I love the name "Queen Victoria's Knickers" and shall always refer to blueberries as such from now on.

We planted blueberries last year, and I'm hoping the bushes will do something marvelous this year. It's my dream to have a backyard filled with blu--er, Queen Victoria's Knickers. Not only are they amazingly healthy, they cook up into great pies.

Fortunately, we also have a pick-you-own place nearby, so I'll get blueberries one way or another come summer.

frances
i eat them too quickly to notice that little frill. i love the dusty bloom their blue skin has. i love blueberries and wish they weren;t so expensive - so now i wish a PYO was nearer to me!
Jo said…
Lucinda, you would love my blueberry plants then, all pretty flowers and leaves, not much in the blueberry department.
Frances, 'hope' is definitely a required quality when growing blueberries, and e, surely you must have a blueberry PYO somewhere about those rolling verdant hills of Hobart?
Jen's Busy Days said…
Oh Jo! I so miss that about Tasmania. It is one of my best memories of there, when we went blueberry picking with the home ed group. I remember Harry as a little baby with blueberry skins in his nappy and a happy big blue face. They were such a treat from the freezer.

I also like picking blackberries on the roadside out the back of Chigwell in Hobart. We were the silly Qlders on the side of the winding narrow road picking them from the fence line with gloves on. I am not sure that many of them made it home.

And the roadside bought cherries were enormous. More like small plums than the cherries I was used to seeing at the supermarket.

Enjoy,
Jen in NSW

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