Last Blast of the Blueberries

In the early 1980s, perhaps in the summer of 1983, my grandfather, Professor Henry Clay Smith, took it into his head to plant about fifty blueberry bushes in front of his house. He had the idea -- suspect even at the time -- that these blueberry bushes would provide for his grand-children's college tuition. Even with today's rising food prices and this year's excellent blueberry season, the patch could produce at most $1000 worth of blueberries in a year. In retrospect, we think that the blueberries-as-college-tuition idea might have been an early sign of my grandfather's future decline into Alzheimer's disease.

But it was a spectacular season. When we arrived here in late July, the front bushes were producing a good crop, and only four days ago, in the first week of October, I took these pictures. Most of the bushes look like this:

In the last row, two final bushes were still loaded with berries:

Next year, as part of my orchard plan, I hope to put in a few blueberry bushes of our own.

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