Janet Armuth Wolkoff My personal strawberry festival in my backyard yields home-grown, heart-shaped strawberries every year.
Janet Armuth Wolkoff is a writer and an attorney. She grew up in Millburn and lives in South Orange with her family.
For the last six weeks the strawberry patch in my backyard has not only given me magnificent fruit, but also great pleasure. Picking strawberries with family and friends is a great unifier. Now, not even a chipmunk will find a berry beneath the green leaves of my still perky, but barren, patch. But I have my memories of yet another great strawberry season.
Strawberry plants are voracious growers, I have learned. Within just a few years they filled my odd-shaped garden bed. When I step in to pick the berries in the middle, it’s fun to toss off my sandals and carefully balance to avoid squishing. On their own volition, the tendril roots of the strawberry plants each year run further sideways along my linear stone wall, adding perennial cover to garden beds that otherwise would require considerable plantings.
Janet Armuth Wolkoff It didn’t take long for the strawberry plants to own my garden.Who doesn’t love picking a strawberry — rinsing it off and then popping it in your mouth? But strawberry picking is for nimble hands. You can’t be hasty because you will accidentally pick one that’s not yet ripe, or clumsily damage a ripe one by yanking too hard. It can become tiring in a short amount of time — you have to squat and bend and usually the sun is beating down on you.
Janet Armuth Wolkoff My strawberries — ripe for the picking.Like any farmer, though, I pick with pride. I feel good about my organic garden, the abundance of my harvest and the size and juiciness of each individual berry. Every year, I have more strawberries than my family and I can enjoy. And every year, new memories wrap around strawberry season.
In past years, I’ve invited the neighborhood children to come by and pick strawberries. A trio of adorable little girls came last year with their napkin-lined baskets in hand — very Goldilocks!
Another year, I invited new neighbors, and strawberry-picking bonded us.
This year, my strawberry patch leaves me with two special memories: I made strawberry picking part of my twins’ June 13 graduation party from Columbia High School.
Courtesy Janet Armuth Wolkoff Strawberry-picking is a great unifier.And I was also able to give a friend whose husband had just died a distraction from her grief by hand-picking strawberries.
“Look at what a beautiful, deep red they are,” she cried. “It’s amazing that they’re right here in your backyard!”
She picked like a pro — instinctively going straight for the juicy ones. She went home with enough strawberries to fill a bowl and to last a week.
Janet Armuth Wolkoff Strawberries from my garden, rinsed and ready to eat.My love of strawberries goes back to my South Mountain School days in Millburn. The annual Strawberry Festival, with its amusement rides, cotton candy, snow cones, also came with fourth-grade anxiety over which boy would I walk around with — Richard? Jeffrey? Bobby?
No anxiety interferes these days with my personal strawberry festival that takes place every June in my backyard. Only fond memories of how my beautiful red fruit, shaped like hearts, never fails to make my heart swell and allows me to connect with the hearts of others.
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