When we first planted our blueberry bushes, we were complete novices, and it took several years before they collectively produced more than a few dozen berries. After a lot of research – and numerous blueberry bush funerals – we finally had healthy plants producing delicious bowls full of fruit every day. We felt like legitimate growers.

Then the birds found our berries. It was demoralizing. I would head out after work each evening to pick the day’s harvest, only to find that at least a third of the ripened berries had been partially eaten on the bush. It felt like a personal attack! And to add insult to injury, the birds didn’t even the entire berries. It looked as though they had just picked at them and left the remaining flesh to dry out in the sun. Like they weren’t eating them because they were hungry; they were just taunting me. Grrrr!

Determined to figure out how to reclaim my prized berries, I asked several gardeners who know more than me (that’s a big universe) for advice – and I received all sorts of suggestions:

• Place a fake owl near the blueberry bushes – smaller birds consider owls predators and will be frightened away. So, I bought a solar powered owl with very realistic-looking eyes whose head moved back and forth. I think the birds just laughed at him and went straight for the berries.
• Stick shiny foil pinwheels in the ground or hang CDs from the branches – the sun reflecting off them will scare the birds. Well, pinwheels and CDs made for interesting yard art, but they did not scare the birds.
• Place a scarecrow in the middle of the blueberry bushes – the birds will think it’s a human. That seemed to work at first, but the birds quickly caught on and came back even hungrier.
• Mix four packets of grape Kool-Aid and a gallon of water and spray it on the plants. I had visions of our yard being overrun by ants and didn’t even attempt that remedy.
• Plan for more blueberries than you want to harvest and allow the birds to take the excess. What? We had worked so hard to get these blueberries – there was no excess crop!
• I even asked Florida’s then-Commissioner of Agriculture for advice. He agreed that birds were a formidable foe and recommended explosives. I took his word for it, but didn’t want to get fined by our HOA.

I wanted to hate those birds. But I also understood that foraging for food is one of their survival instincts – and I was literally dangling something they needed right in front of them.

Then someone suggested I try tulle – the meshy fabric used to make ballet tutus. I bought several yards from the local fabric store and placed the tulle carefully over my blueberries. Tulle is porous enough to allow the plants to get sun and water, but the birds can’t peck through those little holes to reach the fruit. The result looked like a failed Halloween ghost display, but I had finally stumbled upon an avian defense system that worked.

And I am now reconciled with the birds. I no longer resent them for being birdlike. We have moved on to a peaceful coexistence – and as compensation for their loss (I later read that birds are attracted to blueberries primarily for the water they contain), I am much more conscientious about keeping water in our birdbath for them.

As humans, we can be a lot like those unprotected blueberry bushes. We are exposed to a million different influences that threaten to steal those parts of ourselves that make us who we are. World events can turn our optimism into cynicism, careless or cruel words from a friend or family member (or stranger) can sap our self-confidence, a failed relationship can break our hearts, a life-changing health diagnosis can steal our hope.

All those things are inevitable parts of life. They will happen – either directly to us or to someone else we care about. Just like birds can’t help making a meal out of the literal “fruit of your labor”, bad stuff just happens, and it can gobble up our joy.

But there are ways we can apply our own “tulle” to keep the bad stuff from hardening our hearts or quenching our spirits.

• Create boundaries with people who consistently drag you down with hurtful words or casual microaggressions.
• Limit the time you spend consuming world and national news. The odds that any of that information will be uplifting or positive are pretty slim, so you should expect that too much of it will make you depressed.
• Time and distance can have amazing healing effects. Stepping back from a hurt or disappointment can help you see it in the larger context of your life and shrink it down to a manageable size.
• Channel the wisdom of Sir Isaac Newton: for every bad thing that threatens to crush your spirit, find an equal and opposite good thing that makes you feel grateful.
• Go outside and look for little things that can take your breath away: listen to the birds talk to each other, watch a squirrel do what squirrels do (they can be immensely entertaining), admire the shape of the clouds or notice how the Spring weather has brought everything back to life. Just like that.

And maybe even buy yourself a tutu? It’s really hard not to laugh at yourself when you are wearing a tutu.

“Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.”

Proverbs 4:7