Of Frankenberries and Strawberry Fields

 Bruce brought home several boxes of strawberries to serve as a snack at a meeting I had in my classroom yesterday afternoon.  They were a scary, misshapen mound on the plate.  The teachers politely eyed them, but I didn't actually see anyone eat any of them.  I finally decided to give one a try and picked out one of smaller berries.  It was the size and weight of a golf ball.  I won't say that it tasted like a golf ball, because it tasted like a strawberry.  A mealy, insipid, slightly under ripe strawberry.  I only ate one.  I brought them home again and this evening Bruce fed them to the chickens.

The frankenberries (with a T-Rex for scale)

Here are our strawberries.  My friend Dorothea gave us a box of plants last summer that were going to be discarded.  I planted them in one of our raised beds. Many of them withered away or were eaten by the chickens, but some of them hung on.  I kept watering the survivors and earlier this spring they got a drink of fish emulsion.  They liked that.

And now - tah-dah! - we have fruit.


We've only had a few handfuls of the small, thimble-sized berries, but what they lack in size, they make up for by shouting STRAWBERRY!!!  to our taste buds in a very sprightly way when we bite down on them.  Not to brag or anything, but just one of our tiny berries has more flavor in it than a whole box of the gargantuan store-bought ones.

Oh, all right -- I am bragging.