If you want fun and useful information about strawberries, try the Strawberry Facts Page.

May 8th Strawberry Update: (insert teletype noises here)
Out of twelve struggling plants, I think only 11 are going to make it. Strawberry Plant #2, hereafter referred to as Mortimer, has made known his determination to pass on to that Great Strawberry Patch in the Sky. He lies gasping on the dirt in his death throes and there's not a darn thing I can do about it. Last night as I conferred with Mortimer, pleading that he stay on with us for a while, he whispered dryly, "Wendy, I'm going to a better place, a place where strawberries are not used as slaves for the pleasure of humans, a place where they don't make pies to serve in Midwestern dinner theaters."

The other unfortunate thing is that Mortimer seems to be causing some dissention in the strawberry masses. Strawberry Plant #1, hereafter referred to as Henrietta, was looking a little peaked as of last night. I have not had the courage to go out yet this morning to check on them.

The tomato plants, who share the same bed as the strawberries, were not available for comment.

late afternoon, May 8: James, the landscape designer, has pronounced Mortimer dead. Amid the noise of the chainsaw and hubbub of digging and tearing out of old plants to make room for the new, Mortimer gave up the ghost. James, out of sheer pity or perhaps due to a fit of empathic embarrassment at my inept handling of the situation, says he will bring me a new plant next week.

With the exception of Henrietta (who is still in Intensive Care), everyone else looks like they are going to make it.

Funeral services for Mortimer would have been held on Friday, but in the shuffle, his remains seem to have been lost. James, the landscape designer, has a sleight of hand skill that is remarkable.

May 10: Henrietta, while looking peaked, is managing to be the first fruit-bearer in the berry patch. The new strawberry is half red, half white. I'm still waiting for it to turn completely red so I can see how it tastes. It's a bit premature to start planning a strawberry festival (at this rate..), but I am optimistic.

May 12, SABOTAGE! I went out to check Henrietta's berry progress and have discovered to my shock and dismay that someone has been out taste-testing berries! I flipped over the stem that was supposed to be holding the berry and it looks like it has been chomped clean off. I lament my lack of vigilance. Some little animal has found the one, single berry that was there. I can't believe it.

It's time for some serious gardening measures.

I have a call into the county coroner's office. I am going to request they send a forensic specialist over here ASAP. I want answers. I want clues. I want the culprit's little furry head on a platter.

May 19: A near-midnight planting by flashlight has occurred. During my time of sickness, the man of my dreams spent a couple hours watering and fertilizing the strawberries while I sat inside the house pointing a flashlight to all the appropriate spots. Said Man of Dreams also planted a new berry plant to replace Mortimer (may he rest in peace). The name Mortimer II is not really fitting as the new strawberry plant has a feminine air, a sort of cultured, European kind of attitude. Cecilia is appropriate.

Cecilia is bearing two luscious-looking berries which will be picked tomorrow if I can get to them ahead of the other unnamed Berry Predators.

Strawberry Unit #7 (who does not have a name yet) had been sending out a runner for quite some time. I was ignoring the runner, because I didn't want to get my hopes up that it might turn into a new plant. As of today, however, it appears to have taken root in the ground, so a second generation has already begun.

Of course, I am still waiting to eat a strawberry...

May 21, Sabotage! Two luscious berries were waiting to be eaten. Cecilia, the fruit-bearing uberplant, had produced two berries and again, before I got the chance to harvest them, they were eaten by the unknown saboteur. The berries were absolutely devoured by something hungry, not merely nibbled at selectively. I am organizing a lineup this afternoon. Any bird or insect with remotely red-stained lips, beaks or mandibles will be the forthcoming recipient of my revenge.

May 30: After having a powwow with James, the landscape designer, we have determined, the little berry-hogging vagrants responsible for the garden sabotage are the sow bugs. James sent over some stuff to put on cardboard or paper to attract the bugs. Wahoo.

June 1: I am now adding the descriptive appendage "Goddess of Fertility" to follow my name. It looks great on a business card and is a provocative way to introduce myself at parties. "Hi, I'm Wendy Murdock, Goddess of Fertility." The reason... it's the strawberries, really. Nothing to do with my particular reproductive state. The berries are growing, going forth and multiplying as all good plants should do. They are sharing a bed with 6 beefsteak tomato plants and I've noticed the berries waving their tendrils in a friendly fashion to the towering tomatoes.

I think I'll buy some overalls.

June 3: What I took as friendly behavior, I can now interpret as a strategic posturing for more garden space. The strawberries have launched a full-blown attack on the neighboring beefsteak tomatoes. I spent time today, pulling back runners and lining them up in an orderly manner to give the tomatoes some space. While the beefsteaks sound like a manly tomato, they are turning out to be inadequate in matters of war.

June 6: I finally got a berry ahead of the sow bugs. It's sitting in the kitchen, waiting to be eaten.

June 7: Small and perfectly shaped, it sat washed and ready to be munched. I sliced the berry in half and shared it with the TasteTester of my Dreams. After heavy debate over whether we should taste the berry before or after answering the ringing phone, we finally consumed the first fruit of the berry patch.

Simply put, it's the best berry I have ever tasted. Really. Maybe because I knew it was coming out of our berry patch. And maybe because it wasn't refrigerated. It was full of flavor and aroma. Absolutely worth all the fuss.

The greed has overcome me. I want more. Tomorrow, it's time to fertilize and drive those little plants into overtime berry production.

June 15: Out of control. I don't know any other way to describe the strawberry plants. They are all over the place. The attempt to produce more berries has failed, but probably in a good way. While there are no more berries or even blooms, the shoots have taken off and are propagating new plants all over the place. I was trying to keep count, but it's a losing battle.

And speaking of battles, I can see the fear in the tomatoes demeanor. While they are towering over the garden patch, I can tell they sense the strawberries slow but insistent encroaching on the tomato territory.

June 21: No sow bug action. Ha. The hot cardboard death has apparently done them in. I feel vindicated.

June 22: No bad dreams. Apparently I don't feel guilty.

June 23: Blooms! One of the plants has 3 or 4 blooms. Finally. I am excited because these are "fresh from scratch" strawberries. The initial first berry was actually starting to grow when we inherited the plant, so it sorta counts, but sorta not.

These blooms, however, are brand new and when they make berries these will be the first that have grown completely from our care. Woo woo.

July 15: I am lamenting the lack of berry blooms. The couple of strawberries we have gotten to eat have been fabulously tasty, but are so few and far between. Where are these big luscious strawberries I see in magazine advertisements and gardening catalogs? It must be like those women on the cover of Cosmo. Does anybody, really look like that?

July 20: I found a searchable strawberry database. It sounds good, but it's actually not much use unless you want to find out the historical trends in strawberry production in the U.S. and Ohio between 1960 and 1993. It's not solving my strawberry bloom problem, but you never know when you will need to answer an important tie-breaking horticulture trivia question.

July 31: A friend is visiting. We were standing at the door that exits to the garden where the strawberries are living. I flung my arm out in the general direction of the berries and said, with much enthusiasm, "Look! There are my strawberries!"

I lowered my voice and spoke low so the strawberries would not hear. I added, "You know... they aren't really growing like they were and there are no blooms. I don't know what's going on."

She gave the strawberry patch the critical Earth Mother eye of the kind of Woman Who Knows Her Garden. She nodded then said, "They look a little thirsty."

Oh the pain of personification. Better had she made me eat lemon rinds than to tell me the strawberries looked thirsty. The guilt of my neglect flooded over me like the Red Sea over an Egyptian chariot. What kind of mother am I?

I am going to make my New Year's resolution early. I will practice it every day and by New Year's I shall have it down and be ahead of the well-meaning masses. I vow from this day forward to not only floss daily (I went to the dentist yesterday), but to also water those poor desperate berries every day. Yes, I mean it.

August 10: One rogue, unstoppable berry runner has launched itself over into tomato territory. As mentioned earlier, I have been trying vigorously to keep the strawberries out of where the tomatoes are growing. (They happen to be in the same large raised bed.) Silly me. I had no idea how wild those strawberry plants can get.

I went out today to try to move the offending strawberry plant from beneath the tomato it was settling under. It is quite firmly rooted there. I didn't have the heart to yank it out.

I apologized profusely to He Who Grows The Tomatoes. I said, "I'm sorry, but one of the strawberry plants has rooted over in your tomatoes." His reply was that I could certainly dig the thing up because I had enough and what was one less plant?

August 11: I didn't dig up the plant.

August 22: Out of the twelve original plants (which somewhere along the line have turned into too many to count), five are supporting big blooms that will eventually turn into berries. A parade of pessimists have marched through the strawberry area and pronounced "You will not have berries this year!" Indeed, I am determined to prove them wrong. May the Force of Mother Nature be with me.

August 28: I saw something weird today. I was standing in the kitchen looking out at the strawberry patch. There is a waterfall nearby and it has been attracting lots of birds who like to take a bath and drink the water. In the strawberry patch was a brown nondescript bird, just a bit smaller than the size of a blue jay. It was standing under one of the tomato plants (which are right next to the strawberry plants and the bird was poking it's beak vigorously into the dirt. It looked like it was actually eating some of the dirt, although I keep thinking "surely not!" I have never heard of a bird that eats dirt.

However, as I was watching the bird to make sure it was not trying to eat any of my strawberry plants, I saw it look up over its head at the tomato leaves. It sat there a second, contemplating the leaves and then suddenly jumped (without flapping its wings) and snapped its beak onto a tomato leaf and then drop back down to the ground. It did this several times and I got the impression maybe it was trying to pull off a leaf or part of a leaf. After not having any luck, it went back to eating dirt.

Strawberry Abandonment: The strawberries wintered well, since there is hardly any winter where I live. Thanks to the birds, the berries spread to a second flowerbed, where they started covering the ground beneath the baby orange tree.

Last weekend, I moved to a new house, so the berries are going to have to be on their own until someone else takes them over. The new house is wonderful and looks like it has lots of places for various berries.

Stay tuned for more fruit and vegetable adventures in the future.