When I was a little girl, in early spring a man with a rigged up produce truck came to our neighborhood, with windows rolled down we could hear him as he called out…’Ber-ries, straw-ber-ries!’ It was an exciting sound, ‘Momma, Momma, it’s the strawberry man!’ We’d run to the road waving our arms for him to stop…gears grinding down he would roll to a perfect stop, so that the open wooden shelves could be seen. Little balsa wood pint boxes of perfect strawberries were displayed and exclaimed over. As we were dancing on tiptoe to get a better look, the strawberries would be bought- always more than we needed, always a few juicy ones that had to be eaten right away! To this very day, it is one of my most vivid childhood memories. As a young adult I was delighted to see strawberries growing in rich dark soil, the runners connecting the mother plants to their young…pale green berries hiding under leaves that looked like they had been cut with pinking shears., sweet white blossoms with sunny yellow centers, such a sweet sight! Two years ago, I decided to start my very own tiny patch, not for a big harvest more just for the fun of watching them grow and girl, let me tell you! There is nothing as sweet as a fresh picked, warmed by the sun strawberry ! Here in Alabama, it’s almost scandalous how right that groundhog was when he predicted an early Spring! I’ve been just dying to show y’all my little patch and how it’s coming along…
The pictures above were taken the first week of March, very early for Central Alabama! And I was able to buy early spring strawberries at the store, sweet and ripe even then! Now look at my patch in the pictures below- don’t you just love those pale green babies and sweet white flowers!
It’s so much fun to watch! Truly, they can be grown in containers, you just have to treat them as annuals…whatever room you have, start a little patch just for the experience of growing your own and showing the children what strawberries look like before they see them in plastic boxes at the store.Oh my, bless your hearts! I wish you could be here in a few weeks! If the birds don’t get to them before I do? I’m making a pound cake, not biscuits this time-to eat with those strawberries like we did about a hundred years ago, when the Strawberry Man came ’round!
Love y’all, Camellia
But the one thing I have never been able to do is get an orchid to re-bloom, oh I know some who get theirs to re-bloom and to be honest I’ve just told myself ‘you can’t do that’, ‘don’t fight it, just accept it’. ‘Go ahead and buy orchids, enjoy them, enjoy the foliage for a while and discard’. And that’s what I always did, until I needed a filler in my little tabletop greenhouse. So in this spent orchid went.
Do you see it there? It had been there a year, a whole year, when this photograph was taken late last summer! And there it stayed, basically a place keeper in the little greenhouse. Well, in January of this year, I was sitting on the sofa beside this table and for some reason I peered inside and it looked like something was going on…what was that?
Okay, I took the weird orchid out, put it in a container and began to water it ~ thinking this could not be, this should not be happening, I have never, ever had an orchid re-bloom! I believed that the stem would wither and probably go the way of all orchids in my care. But not so, by February….
I was totally enchanted, the dance of life- the unexpected gifts! The opening photograph of this orchid is proof that occasionally life will surprise you, prove you wrong, delight you in ways you never expected. Have I mentioned I love Spring? When daffodil bulbs push up so bravely, when buds on camellias swell without a quiver against the cold winter air, when peonies emerge in tightly wound burgundy shoots and soft delicate lamb’s ears and the pale iris leaves come around ever so softly, I am reminded of the old gardeners who shared bulbs, cuttings, perennials that needed thinning out ~ most of those gardeners have long since died ~ but because of them, every single Spring, I believe in the Resurrection all over again! Those things which we think have died and we no longer see are under cover, putting down roots, gathering strength, doing work we know nothing about. Oh we may know the botany of it, but we don’t know the delightful mystery. As we begin this Easter Season may we allow Spring to be our beautiful reminder of Life’s Sweetest Gift, the Resurrection of our Savior.
Camellia's Cottage 