Strawberry season!

Around two weeks ago, we began to notice ... that we might actually see some strawberries this year. I'd planted strawberry plants last spring and spent a lot of time last summer weeding around them and expanding the area in which they were growing, so the runners that came off the first sets could actually put down roots and grow.

So... around 10 days ago, clumps of berries on our plants, starting to turn red:

We picked maybe a cup or two of berries, and they were juicy and delicious. It kept/keeps raining, and it seemed likely that the remainder of the berries might not make it -- that they might rot on the vine. A lot of the berries were hanging very low to the ground, or were just laying on the ground. But then we finally had a few clear days and last weekend, nestled among the plants, we discovered we had what I consider a bounty of berries!

By Sunday night I had picked two small-ish but heaping colanders of berries. And some more that we ate before I could take this picture:

We ate them plain, ate them mixed in with yogurt... and Evan made strawberry ice cream! I'm going to cut this posting short so I can go have another small bowl of it before bedtime...