97 (Potential) Strawberries!

This weekend is it! The seedlings are going in the garden! In order to get things ready, I have been slaving away erecting a fence. After all, just yesterday morning, Gladys the puppy saw her first deer -- two doe grazing not 75 feet from the garden. The point of all the work getting these starters going for the last two months is not to feed a bunch of animals! (You could, in fact, rename this garden "Operation Feed Mark and Ali.") Also, some animal -- maybe a raccoon or fox -- has been trespassing in the raised bed where I planted lettuce, spinach, and mesclun. Most of those, I fear, aren't coming up as a result. So we will have a fence by the weekend -- that's a promise.

In the meantime, there are a few plants already going -- the garlic (planted last fall), peas (planted in April -- same as the greens), and strawberries (perennials). I am most excited right now about the strawberries -- my favorite fruit. At last counting, there are 97 flowers in our strawberry patch (see photo) -- a patch which started as about 10 plants installed just last year. Last year's harvest -- about 10 berries a day for most of the summer -- was a pleasant surprise, and summer 2011 is shaping up to blow last 2010 out of the water. Let's hope so.

In the meantime, if you are looking for me, I'll probably be outside working on the fence.