See now, this here is one of the reasons why it's good to live out towards the country side of things. We picked these about five minutes from our house, on a hillside overlooking the valley, with humid mist rising from the forests on the other side.
Unlike yesterday, with its crotch - rotting still humidity, the air was moving today, and spending half an hour in a field in the middle of the afternoon was pleasant and rewarding rather than apalling and sticky. Not bad for thirty minutes' work, not bad at all. Big, red, juicy monsters they are, too:
In the winter it's sometimes difficult to remember why we moved here. But in late spring the berry seasons happen (strawberries, then raspberries and blackberries), then come the summer peaches and plums, with apples following in autumn. Of all of them, I like the plums best: they're the elongated Italian variety, and they grow so enthusiastically that the trees look like they're bearing giant, weighty clusters of grapes. And yet: there's nothing quite like biting into a strawberry that you've just picked, still warm from the sun. Apples I can take or leave, although they do make for good cobbler.
Now, I'm sitting in the living room enjoying the new ceiling fan I installed this afternoon (with the requisite cursing and deployment of savage hammers), a replacement for the one that's been begging for death since last August. Pea's on the couch, drawing submarines and timebombs.
There's probably at least half a dozen things I should be doing.
But I'm going to go stuff another strawberry in my face instead.
