It’s a lovely thing, in its way, and it seems churlish to complain about any aspect of a plant that is native to Africa, but is content to flower heartily against a north-facing fence in Darkest Wicklow.

It must, nonetheless, be pointed out that the leaves of Z. aethiopica, glossy and elegant though they may look at their best, tend to form funnel-like structures which, at this time of year, can come to resemble ashtrays for dead snails and decomposing petals.

Having been warned that Vaccinium corymbosum isn’t reliably self-fertile, and having nonetheless not bothered to install a second plant, I have been monitoring the progress of our little blueberry bush with some anxiety.

It put on a healthy show of flowers in May, and was well attended to by bees, although I did wonder if some of the larger ones were managing to get inside those dinky little bell-shaped blooms.

Today, I conducted a brief and unmethodical survey of the rate of fruit set, and it looks like somewhere between 20% and 40%. Interestingly, this varies quite a bit between individual racemes, with as few as 2 out of 9 ovaries and as many as 5 out of 6 ripening in some cases.

However, it seems (from my layman’s understanding of studies like this one) that self-pollination in V. corymbosum is also correlated with fewer seeds and (as a consequence, I assume) smaller fruit, so even if we get a few berries worth the name this year, it looks like we will, after all, have to approach the thing properly in the spring and put in some other varieties.

Geranium 'Johnson's Blue'

I had just been watering, so the water droplets aren’t quite serendipitous. Still pretty, though.