Summer
Today the air was hot and thick. I slept late and woke up with my covers thrown off and my cat lying next to my feet. I got dressed in my running clothes and went outside for my jog, but it was too hot to run, and so instead of running I walked up the big hill across from my house. Up at the top of the hill were hundreds of wild strawberries hiding in the grass. The hill had been mowed, so I sat down in one of the furrows to pick strawberries and eat them.
If you've picked wild strawberries before you know how different they are from the kind that you buy in the store or grow in your garden. They're very tiny, maybe a fifth or sixth of the size of a domestic strawberry, so trying to fill a basket with them is probably hopeless. It's much more fun and less frustrating to pick them and eat them right away. They're very delicate and crush easily between your fingers and after a few minutes of picking them your fingers get pink and sticky and flecked with little bit of hay. Some of the hay will probably get into your mouth as you eat them. It's hard to pull their little caps off without mushing them, so you occasionally end up eating a few tough little leaves along with your berry.
They taste like a whole handful of strawberries at once, all distilled, or like homemade strawberry jam just before you stir in the extra sugar. They are warm from the sun and you are warm from the sun when you pick them. They are usually ripe at the end of June, and disappear very quickly.
If you've picked wild strawberries before you know how different they are from the kind that you buy in the store or grow in your garden. They're very tiny, maybe a fifth or sixth of the size of a domestic strawberry, so trying to fill a basket with them is probably hopeless. It's much more fun and less frustrating to pick them and eat them right away. They're very delicate and crush easily between your fingers and after a few minutes of picking them your fingers get pink and sticky and flecked with little bit of hay. Some of the hay will probably get into your mouth as you eat them. It's hard to pull their little caps off without mushing them, so you occasionally end up eating a few tough little leaves along with your berry.
They taste like a whole handful of strawberries at once, all distilled, or like homemade strawberry jam just before you stir in the extra sugar. They are warm from the sun and you are warm from the sun when you pick them. They are usually ripe at the end of June, and disappear very quickly.