Strawberries

Look closely . . . they're not that pretty, are they?  Not as red as you'd like, kind of small, and what's with those knobby little green bottoms?  Surely, you would not buy these berries in your supermarket, thinking them inferior and not worth the price.  But these are my strawberries, and I am in love with them.

I have a tiered 4' X 4' bed in my garden dedicated solely to strawberries.  Being perennial, my strawberries return every year, and they don't even mind if I never water them.  They ask very little of me, but they give me a month of summer sweetness.  About the only thing I have to do for my strawberries is to cover them with netting to keep the birds from feasting on them.

A couple of days ago, I bought some nectarines at my local supermarket.  They looked good.  Perfect, really.  When I ate one at lunch today, I was underwhelmed by the flavor.  Actually, I should be more specific . . . there was no flavor.  I could have been eating tofu and gotten more of a bang out of it.  I checked that annoying little oval sticker on the fruit:  Kingsburg Flavor Farmer 4036.  So my nectarines came from California, from a "family" company that has been in business since 1813 . . . but wait, that was in England.  Looks like they've been in California for 16 years and boast that they are the largest family owned and operated grower, packer, and shipper of stone fruit in California’s fertile San Joaquin Valley.

Well, that's all very nice . . . but your nectarines (at least once they reach New Jersey) have no flavor at all, Flavor Farmer.

My strawberries, as ugly as they are, are full of flavor!  No pesticides, no hormones, no genetically modified anything . . . just my little berries, doing their best to make my breakfast a happy occasion.  Every morning for the next month, I will gather a few strawberries, wash and dice them, and add them to my cereal.  Flavor?  You bet!  Love?  Abundant!