Strawberries

 There's two plants/edibles I've wanted to grow myself: asparagus and strawberries.  I am mildly obsessed with both, especially strawberries.  I have been found at the strawberry farm picking  less than a week before giving birth to a child some years and with a newborn other years (that's what happens when most of my babies have been born just before or during strawberry season!)  The strawberry farmer came and checked on me several times to make sure I wasn't going into labor in his field!

 I've been growing my own strawberries for about 4 years now.  I have three patches and have enjoyed them immensely!  This has been a very good year for strawberries.  We've had plenty to eat, put in smoothies, cereal, make bread, and freeze.  I still usually try to make it to a farm to get enough to make several big batches of jam all at once, but other than that, the number of strawberries we have is close to enough to producing what we as a family eat.  (of course, I think I could still figure out what to do with two or three times as much as I have, but I'm very thankful and happy with what I have!)  Aaron let me plant strawberries in the landscaped bed areas around the house, and it's actually filled out and made quite a pretty (and productive!) ground cover.

  It's somewhat of a tradition in the Brown family to have strawberry shortcake for supper at least once during the strawberry season; nothing else, just a giant bowl of strawberry shortcake with vanilla ice cream.  Well, it's a tradition I've been very obliging to carry on.  After all, I could eat, breath, and sleep strawberries and vanilla ice cream, so it wasn't something that Aaron has had to twist my arm into doing.  :)  (in fact, I think I do it more for me than him! He probably doesn't care too much one way or the other! :)  )

(Oh, and as a side note, I got my asparagus bed planted last year.  It's doing great and I look forward to a decent harvest next year, in it's 3rd year.  I should be ready for a pretty heavy harvesting at that point, but this year, I'm still letting the roots get established.)