strawberries and sun

 Are wild strawberries really wild?
Will they scratch an adult, will they snap at a child?
Should you pet them, or let them run free where they roam?
Could they ever relax in a steam-heated home?
Can they be trained to not growl at the guests?
Will a litterbox work or would they make a mess?
Can we make them a Cowberry, herding the cows,
or maybe a Muleberry pulling the plows,
or maybe a Huntberry chasing the grouse,
or maybe a Watchberry guarding the house,
and though they may curl up at your feet oh so sweetly
can you ever feel that you trust them completely?
Or should we make a pet out of something less scary,
like the Domestic Prune or the Imported Cherry,
Anyhow, you've been warned and I will not be blamed
if your Wild Strawberries cannot be tamed.

                   Shel Silverstien, "Where the Sidewalk Ends"

Some friends and family and I went strawberry picking the other week, during that hot spell when May tried to act like July.  We got up in time to catch the dawn, filled water bottles and gathered buckets, and set out.  We were out picking before the sun had time to burn the coolness off of the fields.

Hand picked strawberries are different from store-bought berries from California or Florida.  They tend to have more taste and character, because they are picked exactly when they are ripe rather than before.  They also are generally smaller, and come in more quirky shapes.  Store berries have been bread for size and shelf appeal.  These berries were bred for taste and the Ohio climate.
The local berries also directly reflect the kind of growing season that we have.  A wetter spring results in more strawberries that are generally larger and more juicy, but with less flavor. This year, the berries were reasonably flavorful, and very, very sweet with plenty of juice. The most delicious strawberries I have ever had came from a year when we had a spring drought.  It took forever to fill a bucket, but each strawberry was a flavorful bite of heaven. The tasted the way you always have known a strawberry should taste, but it never quite does.

We took our bountiful buckets home and processed them for cooking and freezing.  While I was washing them by the sinkful, there were a few berries that just... looked like a photograph waiting to happen.  So I took them out into the searingly clear sunlight, and photographed them.

The photographs have such a different character than than my previous pictures of strawberries.
Small wonder, as these are a wilder kind of strawberry.

  

of course, in the end, the strawberries were tamed, and turned into this: