The Strawberry Patch

I can barely see the strawberry plants until I'm on my knees, peering into the long grass and then, there they are, smiling up at me saying 'Help!'. I start weeding around them but it's hopeless, as the grass has grown so dense that together they form a tufted rug; a weave of squeaky green shoots that lace between the strawberry stems, knotting them in a puzzle, like a tangled skein of threads on the reverse of a lady's abandoned woodland tapestry, crumpled in a pool of afternoon sunlight on the floor by a straight backed chair.

I start digging them out on impulse, but before long realise that there are too many of these little plants to go back into the churned soil of the narrow bed, with it's barricade of gnarled gooseberries and wild grasses at the back. They lie wilting on the ground but the light is beginning to fade and I see that I will have to wait until tomorrow to plant them out.

I decide to put them in the neighbouring bed which is big enough to house them comfortably, with rows between, rows big enough for small children to crawl down, thinking they're unseen, seemingly hidden by the strawberry netting (green like the ribbons of algae in summertime lakes) that is draped above them from stout posts, not realising that their shuffling movements, their little bums in the air (junior commandos on a mission), is a giveaway, one that causes kind, quiet laughter from adults watching from a distance, as the children snaffle strawberries which never tasted sweeter, the juice warm and sticky in the sun, the flesh soft and yielding, the tiny pop and crunch of the almond-shaped seeds that get trapped so easily between baby teeth; as they did in mine, and my brothers, when we were children at my grandfather's cottage, sneaking strawberries from under his nets, he and my parents watching and gently laughing from the window, witness' to our youthful foraging.