What’s even better than farm-to-table fresh produce, if you don’t have a vegetable garden? Would you believe lawn-to-table food? We have wild strawberries growing in our native-plant lawn this year, so I decided to pick some of them yesterday.
I spent over an hour very carefully picking each tiny fruit, trying not to squish it. It brought back memories of picking the same type of wild berries at my grandparents’ summer cottage in the mountains, when I was a little kid.
Mine probably wasn’t the best plan, berry-picking – in full sun – during the hottest time of the day. Our Humidex temperature was 39C (102F) yesterday. But once I get an idea…
Have you ever picked wild strawberries? They’re hard to find, and to pick, because the fruits are hidden underneath each plant’s leaves. The fruit-bearing stems often curl up into the leaves of other plants, so you have to untangle each stem to find all of its berries.
To make it more of a challenge, I was using my left hand to pick these very-ripe berries. Not by choice, but because of the rare autoimmune and neuro-inflammatory disease affecting my right hand and lower arm.
My left-handed picking caused quite a few squashed strawberries, and the fingers on my hand were stained bright pink from berry juice – for hours. But I kept the squash-berries, figuring they’d taste just as good. And they did!
It was worth the challenge one-handed challenge, and the heat. We had an absolutely fantastic dessert last night; about a half-cup of these tiny flavour-packed berries, mixed with a few dark chocolate chips ,-)
So guess what I did again today? You’re right! I picked the wild strawberries from the other side of our yard ,-) If I’d waited any longer, they’d have become overripe, and spoiled. Or they’d all have been eaten by the birds, chipmunks, rabbits, and others creatures in our area.
These cute little critters have eaten their way through every vegetable garden we’ve tried to grow over the years, and we’ve now given up. So it was a nice treat for my husband and I to be able to enjoy food from our own gardens (or yard).
Are you wondering why we have wild berries growing in our yard, where most people would have grass? More than 20 years ago, when we moved into our then-new home, I convinced my husband of the environmental benefits of not replacing the dead lawn with more grass.
Instead, we seeded clover and let other native plants grow. We chose not to pour treated drinking water onto a grass lawn every few days, using sprinklers, hoses, or an irrigation system. To avoid harming the very birds we were trying to attract, with bird feeders, we agreed not to use herbicides or pesticides. [Which are now, finally, illegal in our residential area.]
Best of all, in terms of yard maintenance, the native plants grow lower to the ground than does grass. That means that we only need mow our lawn every two or three weeks, while our neighbours mow theirs every weekend ,-)
That’s how we ended up enjoying a fabulous dessert of fresh wild strawberries, from our own yard.
As always, thanks so much for reading. The comments section has been disabled, because of spamming attacks from overseas (why hack a non-commercial blog site?!), so feel free to reach out via DM on Instagram or Twitter, -)