© Mekt | Dreamstime.com

Sometimes, when you least exect, a season catches you unaware, and even though the solstice is a few days away, it felt like summer last Sunday. Friends came into town, old comfortable friends, and when they asked, want to meet us at a strawberry festival, how could I not? I planted up the tomatoes and basil today, even though we’re far from the second quarter of the moon. First I attacked the crabgrass. It was deeply satisfying to sit on the ground over an old compost bag and dig out the grass I’d been eying for weeks, wondering, seed or weed? But crabgrass is unmistakable, and so far, I don’t think anyone cooks with it. It is however, an extraordinarily bright shade of green, the color of, oh, say, aphids, and I questioned my tugs, hoping it wasn’t tiny lupines or alyssum I was pulling.

More than anything else in this life, I am a novelist, and I weed like I write, chapter by chapter, diligently applying the weeding tool, or sometimes just using my hands, adding to a pile of castoffs until I tire.

Tomatoes, then stakes, then basil. Stakes to support the plants not for vampires.

Then off to eat strawberry shortcake, made we were told by many hands from one single recipe, piled high with fruit and whipped cream. Children gamboled about, spun cartwheels. In one hour, they ran out of cake. But, oh, we hadn’t quite run out of spring readying to summer.

Related articles

Photo: Yury Shirokov/Dreamstime.com

• Breakfast: Strawberry Shortcake (abuchon.wordpress.com)