strawberry smorgasbord

Kate and I went strawberry picking on Friday at Hilltop Farms! What started out as a royally disappointing afternoon turned into a pretty gorgeous evening. We'd been planning this strawberry picking trip with the garden crew from the Boys' Club for at least a month. The kids got their permission slips all filled in and planned out the questions they were going to ask Farmer Fred about his all-organic farm....and then the trip got postponed because of bureaucratic issues at The Boys' Club. Oh, how they whined. But we rescheduled.....only to have the bus break down the day we rescheduled to. Kate and I, upon learning this, were already convened and ready to bolt from work early to head down to the farm. After a brief spell of whining ourselves about the poor kids, we said, hey, let's go anyway and pick strawberries for the kids. And we did.

When we arrived, Farmer Fred happened to be giving an interview for a local newspaper about strawberries, and the whys and wherefors of organic food. Media darling that I am (hah!), and long-time member of Fred's CSA, I contributed my two cents and posed pretty for the camera.
Then we picked strawberries. Oh, glorious Sweet Charlies, oh heavenly blue evening, thou didst make all my troubles melt away. Strawberries plucked from the bushes and eaten immediately are mind-blowingly good.

strawberry picking 5/18/07

Then, after a mellow round of strawberry picking, we were invited in for beers and got to hear about Farmer Fred's nomination to be part of the 100 People Project. Have you heard about this? I had a vague recollection of hearing the words before, but didn't really understand what it was about, still don't entirely, but damn, does it seem cool.

The [100 People] project will find and capture in film, photography, music and text 100 individuals who represent the global population, proportionate to annual global surveys and statistics. This World Portrait will be used to make an introduction between the peoples of the earth and to facilitate a greater understanding of the diversity and the commonalities among us.

Check it out, it's quite cool. And, under the "videos" tab, you can see some beautifully done trailers, a piece from Niger, AND a piece from NC featuring our own Farmer Fred. It makes me get all misty, it's so beautiful.

Tomorrow, we make strawberry shortcakes and spring salad at the Boys' Club. I'm still disappointed the kids couldn't have come to the farm, but I hope eating the strawberries will be a halfway decent consolation prize.

Coming 'round the bend....

Ah, I'm coming 'round the bend in that funky little side track I've been on the past month or so, and it feels really nice. It's hard not to feel kinda nice on a day like today - it's cloudy and breezy and mild, the world is lushly green and still dripping from yesterday's thunderstorms, and the air has a quality that it occasionally gets in Raleigh, it's refracting light in just such a way.....it sparkles just a little when the sun comes out, and everything looks as though it has just a bit of a sheen. Not quite a glow, it's less like light and more like energy. Like auras. It's very animate, though it is air and trees and clouds. It's really beautiful. Makes me think of....

The Peace of Wild Things
by Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty in the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Ah.
Doesn't that just open something up inside you and make you want to sigh with relief?

This funk I've been in, it's got me thinking about funks and how they come and how they (hopefully) get gone. It's so easy to get ourselves stuck in a funk, easy as a habit. But the getting unstuck, that takes some time and effort and faith and hope. Hard. I think that one of the most important things that we can learn to do in life is to help ourselves out of a funk, to have a forward orientation and put one foot in front of the other and climb up out of a stuck place, get back up someplace high enough to see what's on the horizon. We need help, we all do, but ultimately, we have to do the climbing ourselves.

So here's to getting un-stuck, to the hope and faith in ourselves and the ones we love and the world that helps us get through the stuck times, and to all the good teachers who've helped me get un-stuck from previous funks. I'm really proud to say that I learned something. :)

UPDATE: Relatively recent garden pictures from 5/14! I think the way this slide show thingy works, is if you click on a picture, it'll take you to the site where all the pictures are posted. Check out the pumpkin jungle, I think that's my favorite picture!