Strawberries

Public Domain Photo:  thank you PDphoto.org

Lately, if you look for them, you can find locally grown strawberries.  They aren't those gigantic things in the plastic boxes with very little taste...nope, they are often quite small.  Sometimes sweet, sometimes a bit tart.  Strawberries have so many wonderful uses.  Strawberry Rhubarb pie, strawberry ice cream, strawberry tea....

Many years ago, when I was still a short, small person, we would travel the 45 minutes it took to get to the little town in Nebraska where my mother's parent's lived, and where my mother had grown up.  It was a very small place, but beautiful.  It was large enough to have a school, a town hall, a post office, a home for elders and of course, the gathering place for teenagers, a bowling alley.  There were copious trees, well kept lawns, large, victorian homes.  Grandma and grandpa had moved into town after having run a small, family farm for many years.  They had retired and passed the farm along to their oldest boy.  A middle aged fellow by the time our story begins.  Uncle W. was a large man, with a wonderful sense of fun, who used to tease me until I couldn't stop laughing.  He had a way with kids, and had 3 of his own.  He had married a kind woman, who was a hard worker and quite shy.  Second was Uncle K and Aunt V.  Oh my heavens, what a pair those two were!  Aunt V. was always thin as a rail and on the irritable side.  though she was quite nice underneath her brusque side. (Later when Uncle K. had retired and was doing some gourmet cooking, my Aunt V. gained some weight.  Not a lot.  But she was no longer so irritable.  I guess being on a diet all your life creates some irritability.)   When the uncles were together, there was always lots of laughter, and no one was exempt from their teasing. 

My grandmother was a woman who never said a bad word about anyone...at least that I knew about, until she was in her nineties and was one day irritated with a fellow nursing home resident.  That day we were all so shocked that her comment was met with utter silence, round eyes, and for a moment one might have thought that the world had stopped, right then and there.  She had always been kind to her two dozen grandchildren, and later her many great grandchildren.  Every year there were birthday, Christmas and Easter cards.  She and grandpa, lived in a white house which a porch swing and lovely gardens on the south side of town.  Less than a block away, farm fields stretched in the distance as far as the eye could see.  My great aunt M. lived next door to them, in a house with her bachelor brother.  The house smelled strongly of moth balls and something else that was not quite identifiable.  Auntie M.'s was always the first stop, as she kept a container of candy for the nieces and nephews who would often visit.  Afterwards we would often raid her garden for fresh raspberries.  Then it was back to the front yard where we would roll wildly down the little hill, until we were dizzy beyond belief, and often one of us would get nauseous and the adults would get annoyed. 

Grandma's house always smelled wonderful, and there would be a mouthwatering Sunday dinner in process when we arrived.  I would then politely ask my grandmother if it would be alright to go and pick some strawberries.  She would say that there weren't many there (I imagine she had picked and processed them earlier on the weekend), but I would happily go foraging through the leaves, and I would always find one or two of those perfect strawberries there.  They were the sweetest I've ever tasted.

I always think of Grandma when I eat an especially sweet strawberry.  She had a gift for growing them.