The Blueberry War of 2025

Part Three: What Actually Happened

By Ivy

As told on the back porch. You know how she is.

So Kevin has told you his version.

And apparently the bird has told you his.

Okay. Okay. Let me just…

Where do I even start…

The Stillness

I’ll tell you where it started for me. Not the garden. My chair. Because by the time most of this was happening outside I was in here, and Kevin was bringing it inside with him whether he meant to or not, and sunshine — I mean, this man of mine. This man.

The first sign was the stillness. He comes in from his morning rounds — and listen, I love that he does his rounds,I think it’s genuinely one of my favorite things about him, this man who gets up before the sun to go talk to his garden — but he came in one morning and he was doing the thing. You know the thing? Where he’s very still but his eyes are going a million miles an hour? He poured his second coffee and just stood there at the counter looking at nothing.

I knew that look.

I have seen that look.

That is the look of a man who has identified a problem and is now, quietly and without consulting anyone, going to battle.

I finished my tea and I did not ask. Because asking just speeds up the inevitable and I was not ready for the inevitable at seven in the morning.

My Little Friend

I met my little friend on a Tuesday.

Not Kevin’s famous Tuesday. An earlier one. I came out at a reasonable hour — and by reasonable I mean the dew was gone and my second cup was ready — and there he was on the fence. Just sitting there like he’d always been there. Like he’d looked at every yard in Yakima and thought yes, this one, obviously this one.

I looked at him.

He looked at me.

I said “well hello there little friend” because what else do you say.

He looked at the garden.

I looked at the garden.

It’s a good garden, I thought. Kevin works very hard on the garden and I say this without laughing because it’s true.

I went back inside.

He stayed.

Neither of us mentioned it to Kevin because Kevin at that point had already started the thing with the frost cloth and some conversations just aren’t worth having.

The Foam Darts

The foam darts.

Okay.

So there’s a knock on my office door one afternoon and I say come in and Kevin comes in with a Nerf gun in each hand and the expression of a man who has thought this through completely and is prepared to explain himself.

“For the robin,” he says.

I looked at the guns.

I looked at Kevin.

“They’re foam,” he says.

I turned back to my computer.

Because here’s the thing about being married to Kevin — you have to pick your moments. And this was not a moment. This was a situation that was going to resolve itself one way or another and my input was not going to change the trajectory and also I genuinely did not have the energy. But, ignoring Kev would have been rude so I simply agreed and said, “Yep! They’re foam.”

That night he watched Rocky.

Just the training montage.

I’m in the kitchen making tea and I can hear it and I am standing there at the kettle thinking about my life choices in the most affectionate way possible, you understand.

By the third time through it, hearing him pump himself up for war, I was looking for my inhaler.

Do I explain about birds? Do I really want to get involved in what was now obviously a war, not a battle. Laughter, and a quick inhaler hit, was my answer.

A few days later, he came to bed and got his phone out. The screen glare started doing its thing on the ceiling and I tried lying there with my eyes closed and he says —

“Did you know robins can recognize individual human faces?”

I did not respond.

“Like specifically. They remember you.”

The phone glare moved.

“He knows it’s me,” Kevin says.

And I’m lying there thinking — of course he knows it’s you, you have been having a stare down every evening and shooting foam darts at him for two weeks — but I said “go to sleep” because it was eleven o’clock and some things keep until morning.

He went to sleep.

I lay there looking at the ceiling for a little while longer.

Because here’s the thing nobody’s version mentioned.

He was delighted.

Not frustrated. Not defeated. Delighted. The robin knew his face. The robin was coming back. Every day. To his garden. Because of him.

Kevin was losing a war against a bird and he was delighted about it and he didn’t even know that was what he was feeling. Such a silly man.

I knew.

I turned over and went to sleep.

The Muttering

The muttering started around week three.

Inside muttering. Which is the important kind. Outside muttering I can’t always hear but inside muttering carries through this house something wonderful.

Week three was geometry. Something about coverage ratios and irregular patch shapes and I’m in the kitchen making — yes, more tea, I drink a lot of tea, the summer Kevin went to war with a robin was a very high tea volume summer — and I can hear him in the living room working through the structural failures of the frost cloth situation.

Week four was reload cycles.

Reload. Cycles. This man developed a reload cycle. For a Nerf gun. Against a robin.

I made a whole pot. Kevin started wondering, outloud, why I was smiling and giggling so much. His answer to himself was, “women!” 

The Most Married Thing

I watched them at the blueberries one morning.

I want to tell you about this because neither of their versions gets it right.

Kevin’s in the bushes doing his checks and my little friend is on the fence watching him and they’re both doing the same thing at the same time which is waiting for those berries to be ready, and neither of them is acknowledging the other, and from the kitchen window it looks like — it looks like two people who have had a disagreement and are sharing a space and are both pretending the other one isn’t there but keep sneaking looks.

It looked like a standoff.

It looked like a Sunday morning after an argument.

It looked like the most married thing I have ever seen and neither of them were married to each other which made it, from my perspective at the window with my tea, extremely funny.

Damn,

I love that man.

Anyway.

The Talon

The talon moment.

I did not see this one. I was working. But I heard about it.

Kevin came inside and sat on the couch and I came and sat next to him because I know that sit. That is the sit of a man who has had something happen to him.

“He flipped me off,” Kevin says.

I waited.

“With his talon. He just — he lifted it. And looked at me.”

I considered several responses.

“Are you okay?” I said.

He sat there thinking about it which is actually a very Kevin thing to do when you ask him a direct question. He thinks about whether the answer is true before he gives it.

“Yeah,” he said. “I think I am.”

Another pause.

“He knew the whole time didn’t he,” Kevin says.

And I put my hand on his arm and watched him take a few breaths. I squeezed his arm and said “go pick up your darts” because that was what the moment needed and also because they were everywhere and someone had to.

He went.

He knew the whole time.

I knew the whole time.

The robin knew the whole time.

Kevin figured it out in week eight with foam dart number ninety seven and a talon and honestly, that’s pretty good for Kevin. That’s not even his personal record for the long way around.

The Shoulder Thing

The three branches.

I saw that from the window.

Kevin walking past them without touching them. Standing there. Something happening in his shoulders that I recognized immediately because I have been watching those shoulders for years and I know what it looks like when he puts something down.

He raised his mug.

The robin tipped his head.

I raised my tea at the window.

Nobody saw that but me.

That’s fine. Some things don’t need an audience.

The war was over. Treaty signed, Robbie three branches, Kevin the rest of the bush.

However, in the back of my mind…this year blueberries. Next year strawberries, raspberries, grapes? Was the war really over?

Spring

Kevin was up before dawn which, again, I love about him even when I don’t love it about him, and I heard the back door, and I made my tea, and I came to the window at a reasonable hour.

He was on the patio.

My little friend, Robbie, was on the fence.

And there on the bridge was a mug.

Full of water.

Pointed at the fence.

Kevin put water out.

For a bird.

On the bridge where we got married.

You know what I said to myself standing at that window?

It’s like raising kids all over again.

I say that with love.

All of it.

Every single ridiculous foam dart worth of it.

Then it got better. A new mug replaced the first. One with a name on it…Robbie. 

Well, I am not getting up at 5am to have coffee with him, so I am glad he found a friend that will.

So. Who wants more tea?

So that’s the story, near as any of us can tell it straight. But there’s one more thing. Turns out my little friend has something he wants to say — not to Kevin, not to me. To you. I don’t know what it says. He wouldn’t let me read it. Wouldn’t be much of a letter if I had, I suppose.

Alright, who are you sending this to? Because you already know. You’ve got a name in your head right now, don’t you. Good. The share link is on the next page. — I’ll put the kettle on.