I don’t think this post is about a dog. And it’s not really on time—more retrospective than present. I haven’t written much in April, so I wanted to capture another mini-season: blueberry blossoms. 

Since just after mid-month, my heart has been lifted, again and still, by blossoming blueberries. I think most of them are the early blueberry, as distinct from the Alaska blueberry.  Their translucent whitish pink flowers hang like Japanese lanterns or hopeful teardrops, giving a sort of Christmas light effect to the brush. Apparently the early blueberry will produce the more blue of the berries, the ones with a chalky little dusting of white yeast, while the Alaska blueberry produces the slightly larger and more black colored berry. I’ll be on the lookout for emerging blooms of the Alaska berry, with its offset timing (early May rather than mid-April) working out for pollinators. 

It’s fun to see Cedar disappear in their cover, materializing like a bear from the brush. She’s been climbing a lot lately — chasing song birds and squirrels mainly—but when a blossom from a couple of sprigs I brought inside as a centerpiece fell in my yogurt with the last of last year’s blueberries, and I tasted its honey-sweet floridness, I wondered if she might be onto something. 

  • Transition time
  • Nurse logs nursing blueberry (and brown dog)
  • Blueberry camo
  • Fiddleheads, too…
  • It wasn’t all woods this month
  • Spring tides

What is it about these little flower-lights that seem worth putting off work for a few minutes to capture? They are minimal, not at all gaudy, occupying a beautiful shade of the spectrum, and like so much else, reminders that beauty doesn’t stick around. As if to act out that simple lesson, Cedar wouldn’t stay still enough for a good photo amidst all the constellations of blossoms but somewhere in the tangle I found this little haiku. 

Early blueberry
Fingertips of morning love
We have this moment.