Encounters with Bruno and the Quest for Wild Strawberry Jam

Thursday, June 17, 2010
You’d think with the days reaching their longest lengths of the year, it would seem like the days laze slowly passed this time of year. But it doesn’t feel like that at all. The days of June have gone by as though they were pages in a flipbook.

As we all run around like chickens’ with our heads cut off, there’s plenty to take pause over. The night before last, a couple of loons set to caterwauling in the bay. Yesterday morning, we discovered the reason behind the ruckus. They had a baby! It’s the first loon chick that’s been spot in the bay for a couple years and everyone’s pretty tickled by the little guy.

I helped a turtle across the road on my walk home yesterday. I know it’s probably not my place to interrupt the natural way things are done, but I’d hate to have turtle roadkill if I could have done something to prevent it. The turtle wasn’t thrilled with the helpful hand I leant (there were a couple twitches of his limbs), but he seemed all right once I set him down quietly on the far side of the road.

A little farther along on my walk, I ran into a black bear. The bear was pretty oblivious to my presence and at one point I thought the bear had wandered off in the woods, only to see him come meandering across the road headed the other way. When it became apparent that Mr. Bear had no intention of ceding the road over to me, I clapped my hands and yelled at him. He took off running, the pads of his feet smacking the pavement before he crashed into the woods. I definitely gave him a bigger scare than he gave me. It was a fairly large bear with a glossy full coat: looks as though our neighbors’ bird seed is treating him well!

This spring I read a cookbook that mentioned making a batch of wild strawberry jam. Last year I made wild blueberry and raspberry jam, but because wild strawberries are not particularly abundant and usually too small to justify the effort of picking them and certainly not worth the trouble of turning them into jam. But this year the wild strawberries are out in full force along the roadside and I thought, well, maybe I could gather enough for a batch of jam if I just go out for a little while each evening. Yes, berry season is officially upon us.

Are there better ways I could be spending my evening hours other than being crouched down in a berry patch? Probably. But, all the other ways I can think to spend that time don’t have nearly as delicious results.

I already have a cup and a 1/3 of wild strawberries in the freezer, right next to the container of rhubarb sauce. The summer harvest is starting to amass.

The three articles are written. Huzzah!

(P.S. I left my camera at work last night, but will post pictures when I get home today.)

1 comment:

  1. Sweet. I have to get up there to pick berries. Great blog, Ada! Thanks!

    ReplyDelete

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