Blackberries
Along the yard and out in the back there are hundreds of blackberry bushes and thousands of berries that grow and ripen on them. They grow on their own and can be severely pruned but come right back. The pathways have to be cleared of them regularly or the paths become unpassable. I usually walk out and pick some when they ripen, but most of them go to the birds.
Bluebirds
Eastern bluebirds come back in spring. I have bluebird houses along fencelines for them. Sometimes other birds steal their homes. They are shy birds and tough for me to get a photo of them. If they see me, they fly quickly away and usually perch so far away that I can’t get a good picture. It’s time for me to get out there and install a few new boxes I bought and clear out the nests of the ones already up.
Bluebirds, blackberries
part of Michigan’s palette
living through seasons
What flora and fauna are your favorites where you live?
Tao Talk 
I had my first hummingbird visit this week!
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Dana, what great news!
seasons change
when nature reminds us
hummingbird returns
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I see squirrels, robins, finches, the occasional cardinals, crows, vultures… I’ll have to email you a blurry but still amazing photo of the time a huge deer was in the middle of the yard out back! Very odd, and never seen again.
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Melissa, I see you emailed me but haven’t had a chance to take a look at it beyond a glance. Getting goosebumps on the deer. Sounds like a totem/familiar trying to call your attention to something.
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Ahhh! Wait until you read my email.
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I love seeing cardinals, but really I find any bird or other kind of wildlife fascinating.
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Melissa what kind of critters visit your yard?? Do you have rabbits? The neighbor’s cats across the street (or maybe coyotes?) have wiped out the rabbits in my yard. I miss them.
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I haven’t seen many rabbits.
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:(
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Beautiful! 🐦
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<3
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Berries…yes! There’s something special about picking berries in summer. My grands come and we pick a few blueberries, raspberries and blackberries for pancakes and oatmeal breakfasts. I’m on the coast of Maine – immediately on it – so I watch seagulls, geese, herons and dozens of small songbirds all year. Thanks for this – looking forward to more of spring, and less of winter!
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Donna, I appreciate the wonderful berry-full seascape you are describing. I have read most/all of Elizabeth Strout’s books that are set in Maine. It sounds like a rugged, beautiful place to live. Yes, More Spring! It’s thunder, lightning, and pouring rain out there today. The grass is greening before my eyes.
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I like blackberries but I’m not so keen on blueberries
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Just north of here they are hell bent on bulldozing woodlands and installing blueberry fields :( I like blueberries, but I love woodlands much more.
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I really enjoyed this post, Lisa. I love most animals as you already know.
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Happy you enjoyed it, Robbie, and yes :)
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I recently moved to Missouri, and just discovered mockingbirds are in this area! When I was a little girl, there were blackberry bushes near a tree in a field all the kids liked to climb, and we loved picking the blackberries and eating them right from the bushes. Thanks for bringing up that sweet childhood memory for me.
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Very cool on the mockingbirds. We don’t have them here in Michigan to my knowledge. Glad the blackberries were sweet for you :)
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Wonderful you have your own blackberry bushes. I remember when I was a kid, our neighbor had some that grew to our side of the fence, so we picked and ate what we could from them haha :) I’m glad you get to at least see bluebirds. I don’t know that we have them around here. :)
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Barbara, let’s just say I share their turf with them (the blackberries.) They really own the place. I did get the new bluebird houses up, and now the wait. I actually think I saw one by one of the old houses yesterday, but these eyes aren’t what they used to be. What kind of birds do you have around your place?
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All I ever see are grackles. We used to have several kinds of doves, but haven’t seen many any more, same with sparrows. In the winter we see the Canada Geese return to the lake by our house, and occasionally there is a tall wading bird. That’s about it. :)
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That’s quite a few! I remember visiting my cousin in Austin many moons ago and we walked in a neighborhood where the trees were full of grackles. They’re pretty noisy!
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oh I forgot, sometimes I see a robin or a mockingbird too, mostly I just hear them.
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Neat on the robin and would love to see (or hear) a mockingbird.
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The blackberries look a lot like the mulberries growing wild in my garden… We have guinea fowl, peacocks and hadedas who live wherever they want (I think the peacocks escaped somewhere and took over the neighbourhood, LOL).
Ronel visiting for A-Z Challenge Bast the Protector & My Languishing TBR: B #AtoZChallenge2025 #Books #Bookreview
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I had to look hadedas up. Do you live by water? A neighbor a couple of miles down the road has peacocks. They screeched/called at times while I was riding by on my bike. That is a piercing noise! We had mulberries in the city and they are good at staining everything I remember. They dont’ have briars like blackberries which is a real bonus. Both are tasty :)
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We have an underground river that only shows above ground during the rainy season. The peacock who has taken over our yard, Galahad, loves eating the mulberries. Yeah, I’ve adopted him :-)
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What a perfect name for the peacock!
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Being able to go out and just pick blackberries sounds amazing.
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It is, but I have to be quick or the birds get them :)
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Lovely! Picking blackberries and watching bluebirds sounds like a wonderful past time to me. Maybe if you put a bluebird house closer to your house you might get a closer view? Your lettering on this post and the last (A & B) is adorable.
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Brenda, thanks on the letters. When I first started at WP I did a year straight of coloring (adjusting to retirement, I think) and have used them on a couple of A2Z’s. The bluebirds are shy and so can’t get them too close. The closest one is out behind the house about 20 feet away.
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Blackberries and I battle every year. I love to eat them, but by the time I get some berries, the vines are so huge and thick, I get all cut up when I try to remove them. I’ve gone so far as to find their root bulbs and dig them out, but they come back anyway.
Isn’t it funny how birds seem to know the second you bring your camera outside? Suddenly, a tree full of birds is completely vacant.
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Maria, I’m glad you can relate to my plights, but sorry you share them. Blackberry vines ain’t no joke! And yes on the birds sensing a camera disturbance in the force ;)
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Hi Lisa, I had no idea you were doing the A-Z challenge. I subscribed so i’d get your updates (i’m having sooo many problems with my site on the reader, search, etc). Anyhow, i live in Ohio, so get pretty much the same flora and fauna that you get in Michigan. :)
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Beautiful illustration. I’m not sure that ‘B’ has ever looked so good. 😍
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Gia, thank you so much. I bought a Celtic ABC coloring book and the rest is history :)
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You’re welcome, Lisa. You made a good decision buying that book.🤓
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You are lucky to have bluebirds! I see them when I visit my friend in Connecticut, but I’ve never seen one in the city. We had blackberries in the fields across the railroad tracks where I lived as a child, and we always brought baskets of them home. (K)
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Yes, they’ve been returning for some years now. I think they are too shy for city living. What a happy childhood memory!
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It is. That was a good time in my life. I was reminiscing with one of my brothers recently about it, and he agreed, that was the best place we lived.
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Oh, look at that bluebird! They fed out of my hand in my friend Marianne’s garden in California (induced by live worms, not by any bird-whispering on my part), but we’ve never had one come to our garden here in Massachusetts. I probably need to build them a house. And blackberries, my absolute favorite–sheer late-summer bliss!
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Oh my, that’s an impressive feat with bluebirds eating from your hand. I wish someone would have captured that on video. Would love to see it. I think the bluebirds in the West are a different species and perhaps more amenable to human contact?
I’m sure you could build them a house. I have bought mine already made from various sources, some better than others. If you do, make sure there’s an easy way to get the boxes open so you can clean them out every fall.
Yes, on blackberries. The birds love them!
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I love blackberries! We have them in the garden too :) But we don’t have bluebirds.
<a href=”http://multicoloreddiary.blogspot.com“>The Multicolored Diary</a>
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Glad you have them, Zalka. How do you keep them from overwhelming your garden?
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Lovely to have blueberries and bluebirds in your area
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Lots of blue ;)
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💙💙💙
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I’m attempting a garden this year because a neighbor grows blackberries and eats them right off the plant! I want to do that in my yard, so fingers crossed I can get them to grow!
– Allison
https://lightningflashwriting.blogspot.com/
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Allison, just be aware of how invasive blackberries are! Maybe put them in a carefully confined space, but even then…
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I’ve seen a bluebird near my house only once. We’re not meadowy enough. But we have lots of other birds that make me happy: wrens, chickadees, goldfinches, hawks, cardinals, great blue herons, kingfishers, various woodpeckers…
https://nydamprintsblackandwhite.blogspot.com/2025/03/b-is-for-broken-by-beauty.html
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Was that “the blue thing”? :) I love that story so much!
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Blackberries always take me back to childhood, Li, we went as a family at least once a year, to pick blackberries for blackberry and apple jam (apple for the pectin which blackberries lack) and on the same outing would pick rosehips to make a vitamin c rich syrup for winter colds, and sloes for sloe gin – not that we children got to taste that in those days…
The place we went too was a “green lane” what looked like a very long, narrow field but was actually an ancient routeway. Thanks for sparking the memory…
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Andrew wonderful home recipes and remedies. We have those rosehips out there also. A few raspberries. So interesting about the green lane /ancient routeway. You’re welcome on the memory.
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:-) Our cardinals are so fun. :-)
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Redbirds :)
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