Paying Through the Berry

A friend at church gave us three little strawberry plants a few years ago for our garden. They turned sad and brown, and gave us no strawberries the first year. Thankfully, we were too busy with babies, homework, clinicals, and having no life what-so-ever to rip the wilted plants out in the fall. It snowed on them a few days later, and we considered this to be nature cutting us some slack. However, the next year, the plants miraculously turned green! Little white flowers sprang out. And on a midsummer's night eve we picked the fruits of our labor: six little red strawberries. This was not even enough to have with shortcake. I think we devoured them before they even made it inside to be rinsed off (ah nature! It's all organics and proteins.).

This year, the plants have multiplied like bunnies. They have taken over a third of our garden, sending runners down both fences. We finally have a healthy crop of juicy, tart, delicious strawberries! Although, it is a crop perhaps too healthy now. (What, you expected me to be satisfied?)

In order to reap our harvest, we settled on child labor, and hired a couple migrant workers who were passing through town (otherwise known as our living room). We promised to pay them in strawberries for their work. The boy worker was quite helpful, although we did notice that not every strawberry he pulled from the vines made it into the basket. The girl worker was almost no help at all, and seemed to not even understand that we pick red strawberries, not green ones. Although, she did help by eating rocks out of the garden at an alarming rate. (My daughter, the only child who prefers rocks to berries.)

Once the fruits were cleaned, we set them down for the workers to glean their just rewards.

He was overwhelmed by the possibilities...

But soon they got down to eating their delicious paycheck...

 

                                      

                 

And we discovered with Noah around, there is really no crop of strawberries too generous. Maybe next year Justin and I will get our long awaited shortcake. Sigh.