It is wild strawberry time.
Even as the Strawberry "Fern" plants are trying desperately to multiply (have they no sense of decency? I snip off their runners almost every day), I fell for another - "Ruegen".* It reminded me so much of the wild strawberry that my mother and I ate lifetimes ago in the Swiss Alps, outside Murren, growing in a miniature garden in a large rock, that I had to bring it home. The fruit is tart with an underlying sweetness.
*And if you are wondering about quotation marks (inverted commas) and their relation to other punctuation, read this useful little style guide...All bets are off on each side of the English-speaking Atlantic, though.
If you're ever over in France during early Summer, get to a market and buy "Mara des Bois" strawberries. Heaven.
ReplyDeleteI like these wild ones. I have some, don't know how they got here, but who cares, they taste sweet, sweet, sweet. They're tiny though, I have to collect a good handfull before I pop them in my mouth.
Rob, do you need a cook/gardener? :-)
ReplyDeletewhere did you find them? My croatian roommate and I talked about strawberries from the woods during all the long winter. It is one of our dream to find some here in NY.
ReplyDeleteHi Valerie - at GRDN in Brooklyn, grown by Jim Glover, out on the North Fork.
ReplyDeleteI got two "Mara de Bois" last year in autumn. They've become huge plants and the fruits were huge too. But from my three kinds of strawberries they had the worst taste. First is "Mieze Schindler" but I got those plants earlier this year and they are still very small. And the fruits were really tiny so far.
ReplyDeleteHere is a picture of my "Maras"
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