The Last Strawberries

 Dear Diary,

I try to buy local whenever I can and you can't get more local than these berries.  They were grown by a family right down the road from my house.  It is their first year selling strawberries.  I bought a quart but froze half of them since they were at the peak of ripeness and I wouldn't have gotten through all of them in time.  I will make a shortcake later when an old friend comes for a visit.  The berries were the sweetest, juiciest ones I've had this year.

At this time of year as a child my mother and grandmother would be making strawberry jam.  I use to make it myself here too.  Jam making was a country ritual each summer.  So much of my youth, when I think about it, revolved around a ritual of some kind.  Planting the garden, making jam, canning tomatoes, back to school shopping.  We seemed to do the same things at the same time each year.  There is a great comfort in that I think.

Then, we enter a time in our lives of constant change.  Everything seems a whirlwind and we are caught up in it.  Now, in my later years, I am rediscovering the joy of stability and ritual.  What goes around comes around I guess.