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Strawberry Surprises & Pixel the Hedgehog’s Reviews

June 6, 2010 By Laura 5 Comments

04_picked_strawberries-300x214

The last time I had checked the strawberry bed, there was 1 strawberry that I was sure would be good and ready the next day for pickin’, and I had my name all over it!!

But I didn’t actually get out there until 2 days later.

01_strawberries

And lo and behold, there were several ready, and some were downright huge!

02_strawberry-growing

Not only were there a good many ready, it was obvious there would be a good many more ready in the next day or two also.

They always look so pretty among the green leaves, and dark rich soil, that I’m always feeling a little….reluctant, to pluck them off the stems.  I remember having the same hesitations last year.

03_growing_strawberries
I know. I’m strange.

One more photo. One more angle.

Sometimes, one more day.

04_picked-strawberries

We did get to picking the first ones, and filling up this shallow dish.  As a side note about the dish, it’s one that was always in my home that I grew up in.  It’s blue, and is a Pyrex piece.  I always thought it was a little odd, but always found it useful.  Somehow, it made it’s way to my own home, once I was married.   I have no idea how.  I don’t recall taking it, and my mother was not the type that would come over with a dish of something delicious in hand.  But somehow, it got here.

One of the times my mother was here, I took out the dish to use, and told her I didn’t know how it ended up here.  She then told me something else I didn’t know:  It was once her mother’s (my grandmother’s), and it used to have a handle that attached to the extended lip there, for when using with the oven or stove. Well, that explained the oddness about it.

It also took on more meaning in that moment.

05_huge-strawberry

I was determined to somehow show you all, how big this strawberry in particular was.  Here it is next to a nickle.  But…..my comparison photo somehow does not convey my intent.

06_huge-strawberry

So I tried another angle, looking down at it.  It was a wide strawberry!  But still, it was bigger than the photo looked.

I wished you all could be there, to just hold it in the palm of your hand for a moment, because that is how you would truly comprehend it’s size.  It was the circumference, that was impressive.  But there were many that were almost as big.

07_bowl-of-strawberries

They were so nice to look at, we put them in a pretty bowl for like….a half an hour.

But then the kids wanted to eat some, and Michael wanted to cut one up and put it on his cereal.

08_strawberries-on-cereal

I would LOVE to do more commercial photography. I have so much fun taking photos of stuff like this.  It’s yet another reason I blog.  So I have an excuse to take such photos, and have something to do with them.  Can’t you see this shot in a commercial?

09_fresh-strawberries-on-cereaal Or this one on the front of a cereal box?

Maybe I can work for Kellogg’s.

Do you think I’m good enough?

10

The kids were enjoying them just as they were.  So fresh and juicy!!  The bowl was emptying quickly, but since then, we have filled up that Pyrex 2 more times in the past few days, and some were even BIGGER!

I’ve had so many plans for our strawberries this year.  I want to make some jam, and strawberry shortcake.  But I wonder how I’ll have enough at one time.  Maybe I can freeze and collect them until I have a good amount all at once?  If they make it to the freezer.

11_hedgehog_strawberry It’s good for a hedgehog’s diet, to eat certain fresh fruits and vegetables, too.   So we were SO excited to let Pixel try a strawberry!

She’s going to LOVE IT, right?

12_hedgehog_strawberry

Not so much. She put her visor right down. We even tried cutting off little bits, since she wouldn’t take a bite.

WHAT?! We all just love them so much.  Strawberries are so GOOD!

This couldn’t be true.  She MUST love them too!

13_hedgehog_strawberry

So we tried again the next day, and felt hopeful, for a moment…..

14_hedgehog_strawberry

….but she turned away again.  What in the heck.  We’ll keep trying to introduce her to different things.

She has grown, hasn’t she?  She doesn’t fit in a t.p. tube anymore.

I am still working on posts about our front yard transformation/gardening progress.  It’s going to have to be a 2 or 3 parter, with what I have right now.  I think you’ll love seeing how things are going, and what the plans are.  The future plans include growing other fruit as well.  But right now, strawberries (& tomatoes) are the only fruit we’re growing.  Although we do have a wild raspberry bush out back.

Are you growing any fruit this year?  What are you growing, and how is it going?

That’s a wrap with this post. It’s Sunday night as I type, and we did a lot this weekend.  I’m tired!   I promise the next blog post will not be about our strawberries. In fact, I believe the next will be in the Home Schooling section.  But thanks for sharing in our amateur gardening excitement with us! We hope to hear from you.

Let’s have a great week!

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Filed Under: Gardening, The Homestead Tagged With: cereal, strawberries

I Am Seeing RED!! | Strawberries

May 31, 2010 By Laura 6 Comments

01_strawberry_bed-300x214

It’s Monday evening, at the close of our long Memorial Day weekend.   It’s a bit sad the weekend has gone by so fast, but we’ve got to be happy with all we got accomplished outside!  I have been taking photos like crazy, and can’t wait to show you all what we got done, and what the drawn out plans are for our front yard transformation, into a garden wonderland!  But for this post, I want to share with you the excitement over our strawberries!

02_strawberrybed As some of you, who have been following us for some time now, know, our strawberry bed was just planted last spring.  We planted Everbearing, and June Bearing.  So while we got a small handful of strawberries, there was really never enough at any given time, to really do anything with. But THIS year, they are more established, and maybe we don’t know what we’re talking about….(and as new gardeners, there’s a good chance of that….)…..but it looks like we’re in for an amazing strawberry season!

To start, once our plants broke through the straw mulch with their green leaves, and we raked most of the mulch off, things just started growing like mad!  To see how much things change, day to day, is nothing short of full-scale excitement, in my simple little world here!

Check it out……

03_strawberry

I took a photo of these strawberries on the late afternoon of Friday the 28th.  These are the Everbearing, that are producing fruit right now, of course.

04_strawberry

This is the same strawberries this evening, Sunday the 31st.  I have to admit, it wasn’t a big surprise, that just smacked me in the head out of nowhere.  I watched it grow from a tint of pink, to a richer and richer red, with about 100 visits to my gardens in those 3 days.  RiiiiiighT.  I have nothing else to do.  I only have 4 kids, who live in my house ; ), who want to eat all of the time (like meals 3x a day?  Is that normal?), love to dirty the clothes they where, not to mention themselves, etc.  What else could I possibly have to do?  Nada!

05_strawberries

As to not look too pathetic, you need to know I wasn’t watching just that strawberry.  They are all over the place!

06_strawberries

Honestly, it’s a jungle in there!  I am sure the occasional neighbor driving by, is wondering what in carnation I am doing, bending over so extremely with my big-bum to the street, as I peek under all of the leaves and into the strawberry forest.

07_

The more I look, the more I find!  They seem to be multiplying like, like, like…. rabbits!  Or…. Catholics!  lol.  (Just a little joke there.  I can joke about that if I AM a Catholic, right?) (I think so.  Errr…I’m pretty sure. I mean, I’m fine with it.)

08_

Here’s another!  And I’m telling you, there are lots that are just GIGANTIC!  Or, you know, HUGE.

Ok…it’s our first year, and maybe we are overly-impressed.  BIG, anyway.

09_

Look at this baby!  It’s the only one that is THIS juicy red.  I think it’s going to be red for pickin’, like,  tomorrow!  Whatever would we do with ONE strawberry?  I say, whoever finds it ready first, gets to have it!

I am sure someone visits the gardens frequently.

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Filed Under: Gardening, The Homestead Tagged With: strawberries

A simple Summer Treat

July 12, 2009 By Laura 4 Comments

    We threw together this wonderful and simple summer treat on the afternoon of {A}’s birthday, and called it a  Birthday Parfait.

strawberries and blueberries

It couldn’t be any easier to make:

1) Rinse some strawberries and blueberries in the sink.

(Next year we’ll have enough strawberries of our own from our garden, to not have to use store-bought, but these were really good berries, anyway! Big, juicy, and sweet.)

strawberries

strawberries

2) De-stem and slice the strawberries.

blueberries

blueberries

3)  Go through the blueberries real quick , just to make sure there are no smooshy ones, : ) , and also take off any tiny stems still on.

4)  Get out your can of Redi-Whip.

5) In clear cups, layer strawberries, whip cream, blueberries, and more whip cream on the top.

fruit treats

It was just the ‘light-little-something’ we needed that day, to hold us over until dinner.

It’s also perfect to serve on the 4th of July weekend, or Memorial Day weekend, being red, white and blue.

We and the kids loved it so much, we had it again a couple of days later.  But that time, we sprinkled some Grape Nuts cereal on top, and we loved it even more.

Simple. Pretty. Tasty.

And simply pretty tasty.

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Filed Under: Recipes, Treats Tagged With: blueberries, fruit, fruit parfait, fruit-desserts, fruit-treats, healthy-summer-treats, light-fruit-desserts, light-summer-desserts, strawberries

Strawberry Fields. FOREVER!

June 8, 2009 By Laura 3 Comments

Our family has gotten into some major gardening this year, and you’ll be seeing a whole lot of  it coming up this summer.
Our first project was a strawberry bed.
growing strawberries
We LOVE strawberries!  Just fresh picked and washed.  In our cereal.  As strawberry shortcake.  Chocolate covered strawberries.  : )   If our crop is plentiful enough, I may even make some jam!

growing strawberries

In early May,  Michael built the bed, and we filled it with some ordered and delivered loam, because our yard/land is pretty sandy.  Then we planted 2 kinds of strawberries. Junebearing, and Everbearing.  I discovered while planting that we didn’t get a tag for the Everbearing plants.  I was irked with that, not only because I would have liked to know which variety of Everbearing we got, but also because I wanted to photograph that tag too. lol  Anyway, once all was planted, the bed as a whole looked somewhat on the pathetic side, but I was hopeful they all just needed to get acclimated to their new home.  Don’t look at the ground around it for now. We’ve got BIG plans for all of that too.

growing strawberries

Here’s a shot of a newly planted Everbearing.  When I came across it in my shots, I had to include it because, you have no idea how much time I spent trying to figure out what the original orientation of the photo was that I shot it at.  I did 2 full rotation, 90 degrees at a time, trying to figure it out. lol.  If you think it looks wrong now, you should see the other ways. I was getting dizzy.  I must have shot it at a weird angle.

growing strawberries

This is the tiny beginning blooms of this Everbearing plant.

That first day that we had gotten this garden all planted, a vacationer staying in the beach house next door, asked me how we planned to keep the birds, squirrels and other pesky creatures out of the strawberry garden.  I told him I wasn’t sure, but that I shouldn’t have to worry about it for awhile, because they didn’t even have berries yet.  He just looked kept looking at me, and didn’t respond to that, which I determined as rather odd.  Made me glad, in the moment, that  he wasn’t a real neighbor.  Know what I’m saying?

Well, the next morning we discovered a squirrel romping around in our bed!!   The strawberry bed I mean.  Not the one we were sleeping in. lol.  (Thank goodness.)   Not only was he/she (whatever…who cares) trampling all over the place, but it had already bitten off several of the long stems to the Junebering plants! Turns out Mr. Funny-Looks that was next door, is from Vermont, and has acres of all kinds of gardens. Or something.

Well….I saw Michael do that tight-lips thing he does, when he is super aggravated.  I think it took him all of 2 hours to sketch out a battle plan, (remember…he sketches everything out first)  go to Home Depot for some supplies, and build THIS baby…….

growing strawberries in a covered bed

I was DULY impressed, as I often am with his designing and building abilities, and his facial expression had definitely moved onto one that spoke more of,  “Take THAT squirrels.”  And then one of the kids suggested we get up early the next morning, sit in the window and wait for the squirrels to come, and laugh at them.  (I don’t know WHERE they learned such gloating-type attitudes!? lol)  (OK, I might know where, but I’m not telling you.)

So that all was back in May.  Yesterday in the late afternoon, I went out and did some garden weeding.  The cover just lifts right off very easily, if you’re not 4 legged gray-furred creature, with a long bushy tail.  I thought I’d take some more photos while I was at it.

growing strawberries

Just LOOK at all of the flowers on these Everbearing plants!!

growing strawberries

I just learned that we should pluck these first flowers off, to give the roots more time to get established before the plant starts producing fruit.  So I’ll do that today.  I had been told, when we bought them, that the Everbearing plants, which tend to give a good 3 crops per season of the bigger, juicier strawberries,  can take 2-3 years to really produce a good crop.  But my mother-in-law disagrees with that and says we’ll get plenty this year.  So I guess we’ll see what happens.  Since the Junebearing only put out one good crop for 2-3 weeks ( around June, I’m guessing, lol),  I wasn’t planning on a whole lot, collectively, THIS year.  I hope my mother in law is right, this time. lol

But over at the Junebearing plantings, we’ve got berries growing all over the place!!  Check it out!

growing strawberries

As new gardeners, the initial discovery of strawberries growing had us screaming, and making the neighbor’s dog start barking.  We were rather excited.

Sometime the next day, I saw a squirrel nearby, and before I could stop myself, I yelled in his little rodent face,

“WE WIN!!”.

Now what does that tell you?

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Filed Under: Gardening, The Homestead Tagged With: covered-gardening-beds, covered-strawberry-beds, garden beds, garden photography, garden photos, Gardening, growing strawberries, protecting-strawberries-from-animals, strawberries, strawberry beds

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