Strawberry Wednesday

Wednesday is strawberry sorting day. They are picked and brought to our house by Ryan’s mum, heaped, gleaming and warm from the sun, in tupperware containers. I then sort through them, packing the firsts in 250g punnets to take to our client tomorrow morning. The seconds, that are pecked by birds, munched by tortoises, deformed by bugs or just not good enough, go into a big bowl to be made into jam another day. The slightly squishy, marginally overripe ones, I eat as I sort, or give to the children when they come begging for just one. They have the best flavour, but won’t keep till tomorrow, either for selling or jam-making.

Today as I sorted through the first container, at least two thirds of the strawberries were not making the grade: twisted, scrunched up with a possible bug inside, pecked, scorched by the sun on the black plastic around the plants. Usually it is the other way round. Two thirds good, a third or less seconds. I recalled my post on Monday, hoping that the universe would allow me a few more batches of jam this season and laughed wryly to myself. I started composing in my mind a post about being careful what you wish for and suspected that there was some mischievous angel gently mocking me! At the rate I was going with the sorting there would be hardly more than a kilo to sell and I’d be up to my ears in jam-making for the next two days.

As I carried on the disjointed musing with Garth Brooks’ nicely corny lyrics - “some of God’s greatest gifts are all too often unanswered prayers” - echoing around the empty recesses of my mind, the ratio of good strawberries improved and by the end I had nearly four kilos for sale and two for jamming, which was just right. I also had consumed an above average number of deliciously overripe berries, flooding my system with vitamin C and antioxidants, which should help with warding off whatever bug is trying to get a hold on me today. So it seems after all there is some rhyme and reason in this crazy world – to quote Garthy (one of my favourite washing-up CDs - how uncool is that!) from the end of the same song “maybe the Lord knows what he’s doing after all”!