The Color Red

The Friday I got back from Australia, Urse, Fuson and I headed down to Santa Cruz to the Mecca of tasty, red-to-the-core, union-labor, organic, $4-a-pint-at-the-market strawberries, Swanton Berry Farm. This has become something of a summer ritual for Ursula and me. I think we've gone down to Swanton for the past 3 years. Sadly, because we went quite late in the season this time, the strawberries were a little sad.

Still, it was wonderful to drive down the California coast. The cool fresh air and sunshine reminding me that I really was back, and that, Mark Twain's possible (bitchy) comment notwithstanding, it really was summer.

Although some strawberries looked like this (still not red to the core, but at least red all over):


Most looked like this:


Perhaps it was the jetlag, perhaps it was my own pickiness (no pun intended), but I ended up only collecting 2 pints of strawberries after about a half hour or so of wandering the rows. Urse and Fuson did much better, collecting about half a flat each:


We stopped in at the farmstand to pay (on the honor system), and to try the strawberry and blackberry jams they had out. They had a cute chalkboard with a paper hand that I don't think was there last year (not sure, though):


I'll leave you with California's gorgeous coastline as seen from the window of Ursula's car: