June, Strawberries, and the Amaryllis That Simply Refuses to Be Ordinary
The strawberries are ready. And I am, frankly, delighted. We grow our own, as you'll know, and I cannot overstate the difference. I really cannot. Shop-bought strawberries and I say this with no malice toward the supermarkets, they do try, shop-bought strawberries are a pale imitation. A photograph of a strawberry. A polite suggestion that a strawberry once passed through the vicinity. They look the part, I'll give them that. Perfectly red, perfectly round, lined up in their little plastic cradles like they've been told to behave. But the taste. The taste just isnt there Now eat one straight from the plant. Go on. Bend down, pick one that's properly, deeply, gloriously red all the way through, and eat it on the spot with the soil still on your boots and a bee doing its business somewhere nearby. That is a strawberry. That is what a strawberry is actually supposed to taste like. Sweet, sharp, warm from the sun, and absolutely nothing like what's sitting in that ...
