Last year was a tough year for red berries. Not only were they in short supply in ditches and long road sides, there weren’t a whole lot of fake ones available either. Red berries were in short supply. But that was last year.
Officially, I believe they are called winterberries. Some people call them holly berries, and they are a type of holly. This particular variety of holly is deciduous, so unlike English holly and a few other types, it drops it’s leaves in the winter. All that’s left are the berries. Apparently, these things like acidic soil in damp areas, so they like living around here.
But last year was not a good year for winterberries. And since fake holly berries were also experiencing a shortage, a number of people felt their Christmas decorations were lacking.
Which is how I discovered the great red berry shortage of 2020. My mother was looking for red berries for Christmas decorating. Many things might be optional, but red berries and pine branches are necessary. I could find pine branches. I have a pretty good source for pine branches. But red berries… they weren’t happening.
Until I remembered a couple English holly bushes nearby. They didn’t have a lot of berries, but there were a couple branches that provided enough colour and red berries to complete decorations for the season.
This year, we were given specific instructions to start early and find artificial red berries. I am not a fan of most things artificial, but my mother had her reasons for this. If we use the fake ones, they’ll last longer. In fact, if we use real berries, they might not even last until Christmas. And behind all this… birds.
Birds won’t eat fake red berries, so they will last through the season. Although if you listen to the conspiracy theories, birds aren’t real. They are actually fakes sent to spy on us by the government, they sit on power lines to recharge their batteries and they don’t eat red berries.
Except our birds do, so I guess we still have a few real birds mixed in with the fakes. And they’ll eat your berries before Christmas, if they can. I tried the “birds aren’t real” argument, but I was overruled.
But we did manage to find some fake red berries. Seems a bit of a waste in a year with plenty of natural red berries lining the ditches pretty much everywhere, but I guess we’ll just leave those for the real birds.
And as long as the fake birds don’t eat our fake berries, Christmas will be as it should. I’m just happy to live in a place where real birds exist. They can eat all the red berries they want.
