Flowers yield to fruits of summer

It is the first of July and I write this after taking a leisurely stroll in the rain through Marjorie’s garden, returning to the keyboard with thoughts about summer fruits, both edible and ornamental.

In that section of the garden devoted to our summer table, where we compete with other creatures for the harvest, the stage is set. Under Marjorie’s watchful tutelage, I’ve dusted the ground around the swelling strawberries with diatomaceous earth in hopes of thwarting the slugs. I have cast netting over the high-bush blueberries, just in the nick of time. We wait with eager anticipation for the ripening of raspberries, both red and purple. Later this month and into August, if all goes according to plan, the store-bought banana in my morning bowl of shredded wheat will be replaced by the sweetest return of gardening labors!

Meanwhile, clusters of small green berries have formed on the arching branches of Marjorie’s red elderberry shrubs (Sambucus racemosa var. pubens). Two weeks ago, their round-topped clusters of creamy-white flowers were crawling with insects moving the pollen around.

In another two weeks, the berries will be larger and bright scarlet red. These are for the birds, for the red-eyed vireos, wood thrushes, gray catbirds, and brown thrashers. They are appeasements, concessions for leaving us the blueberries. Still, we will get to enjoy their bright color for a while, before they are taken.

(Some authorities report the berries of the red elderberry as toxic. Other sources indicate that cooked berries can be eaten but that all other parts of the plant and uncooked berries are toxic. To be safe, leave these berries for the birds!)

I’m not sure that we will take the same conciliatory attitude about the common elderberries (S. canadensis) planted last summer in a shadier and wetter area of the garden. Only now just starting to flower, these shrubs will bear flat-topped clusters of purplish-black fruits in late August, berries that with considerable sweetening will make tasty jellies, pies, syrups, and wines.

Thinking about a pie or two, just to be able to say that we have had the experience, we may throw a net over these shrubs as the berries start to ripen. Otherwise, the squirrels and birds are sure to take them. Common elderberries are eaten by more than 40 species of birds, attracting many fall migrants as they stop to refuel on their southward flights.

It is good to have the summer fruits of these two elderberries to grace our summer gardens and lessen our dependence on the native viburnum species. Sadly, there is no good news to report concerning the viburnum leaf beetle. Marjorie recently ripped out the garden’s entire planting of arrowwood (Viburnum dentatum), a magnet for this pest, after the leaves were severely skeletonized by the beetle larvae. Despite our best efforts at monitoring and control, we realized that this problem would only worsen with time. Marjorie replaced the arrowwood with Northern bayberries (Myrica pensylvanica), another native shrub with blue-gray waxy berries that persist through winter and are relished by wildlife. And while a wild raisin (V. nudum var. cassinoides) currently graces Marjorie’s garden with its lovely flowers, we hold our breath as we wait for emergence of adult beetles from the soil, hoping they feed on more arrowwood in the wild rather than on this garden gem.

If we are lucky, we may have at least one more season to watch the berries change color, first from green to pink, then to robin’s-egg blue, finally to raisin black, before the birds take them all away.

This is Marjorie’s garden in the summer. Spring flowers give way to summer fruits, some for us and some for the other creatures that share the garden with us.

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