I keep planting blueberry bushes. I love their shapes and the color they turn in the fall – mottled greens and burnt oranges. They’re my favorite “foundation plant” – you know, those bushes that are planted along foundations to hide the concrete. I never, ever want an evergreen that needs pruning into unnatural geometries. I’m not fond of rhododendron and I really dislike azaleas with their neon-flowers. (Don’t send hate mail. I’m sure they’re a few nice varieties, but in my mind they remind me of the worst of suburbia.)

Blueberries would be fine even if they didn’t provide fruit. But they do. I’ve got four types in my yard, and so get berries that range from black to blue and from bb-sized to plump peas. I’ve been eating them by the handful, putting them in my breakfast cereal, and freezing them for the winter. I’ve also been baking. I’ve made a Maine Blueberry Snack Cake, a Blueberry-Ginger Crumble with Pecans, a Blueberry Buckle (like a cobbler, but it buckles in as it bakes), Blueberry Muffins and this Blueberry Pie with a Hazelnut Crust.

I don’t have recipes to share. Sorry. One of the pleasures of NOT writing a cookbook is that I can improvise and not measure as I go along. Hmm, but a blueberry cookbook would be fun to do….