海角大神

We grow really good strawberries in Oregon. That鈥檚 fortunate, because no one wants the shipped ones; you might as well eat photographs of strawberries. Strawberries begin to pout and go starchy as soon as they鈥檙e picked, and the best way to enjoy them is to lip them directly off the plant, like a Labrador retriever.聽

Our climate and soil are conducive to growing the very best, and everybody does. Hoods! Quinaults! You just drop a few bare-root plants in the ground and yell 鈥淗i-yo!鈥� and they gallop across the bed. You鈥檒l need to take the weed wacker to the edges a few times a season to keep the luscious goo off your driveway.聽

All of this is good news for my husband, Dave, who loudly adores strawberries. Naturally, I can鈥檛 grow strawberries. I can鈥檛 grow even one strawberry.

There鈥檚 a long bed thumping with raspberries; there are blueberry bushes groaning under the load. And somehow, Dave thinks, none of these is as delicious as the particular strawberry I cannot grow. I don鈥檛 even think he cares that much. It鈥檚 just that he can鈥檛 have it. Suddenly, a good homegrown strawberry is the most important thing in the world, and completely fictional. It is the very unicorn of fruit. It鈥檚 trickle-down economics.

Everywhere we walk in Portland, waves of strawberries crash onto the sidewalks like nature鈥檚 own reproach. Dave pauses for a long look, then turns to me with the eyes of an orphaned basset hound. It is important to him that I feel proper remorse. I may accomplish worthy things all year, but none of it matters in strawberry season.

I have tried. In fact, I have had strawberry plants in the ground for 30 years. Occasionally a small, hard, green fruit emerges, looks around, and dies friendless. The plants are supposed to propagate themselves by means of runners, and mine do, too. My runners are very long. They鈥檙e trying to get to the neighbor鈥檚 yard. Most people grow the June-bearing varieties, but I also grow the ever-bearing ones, so that I can fail to have strawberries all season long.

I have a successful garden, otherwise. People assume I know what I鈥檓 doing, but that鈥檚 only because I pull out the dead stuff. The strawberry plants never die. They wouldn鈥檛 be able to pro颅ject guilt and shame that way.

There isn鈥檛 much to the growing of strawberries, according to the experts. You plant them in the spring, using a ruler to assure their personal space, which allows them to imagine life will be peaceful and kind. That first year, should they deign to put forth flowers, you remove them. This is supposed to have a disciplinary effect and urge them to eventual greatness. The second year you harvest the imaginary fruit. Then you mow them down so they don鈥檛 get any ideas. The third year you pull them out because they鈥檙e exhausted.

I don鈥檛 know why, because they never do anything.

And that鈥檚 that. You have to start over then, in a whole new area, because strawberries are easily terrified and your previous patch was the scene of so much grief. The pattern continues until you run out of space where you haven鈥檛 previously grown strawberries, and then you have to move.聽

This year I thought I might experiment with soil amendments. The soil pH is key, I鈥檓 told. You can have all the minerals and nutrients in the world, but if your soil is not the correct pH, the little princesses won鈥檛 pay any attention to them. I could offer them some lime. Or I could go to the store and buy a nice pint basket of Hoods.

Store鈥檚 only a few blocks away.