Inevitable

When part of the haul I brought back from my parents' house included these:

And a friend called while I was driving back to Cleveland to tell me that the pick-your-own strawberry place was open, and another friend told me she and her daughter had never been out to pick strawberries before, and the weather on Sunday was 75F and sunny, well, it was pretty much inevitable that we'd end up here again.

Ready for anything!

Action shot that includes something other than my huge ass and the back of Liza's head! And yes, she actually picked this year, although she found it a lot more frustrating than when we did the raspberries last fall.

Why it's (almost) worth the effort

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Anybody got a hankering for some strawberry jam? Because I've got a bit to spare. It's going to take a while for the three of us to get through the eleven pints I put up yesterday morning.

*In case anyone is wondering, the white stuff at the top of the jar is paraffin wax, which is how my mother and grandmother always sealed their jam jars. It's fallen out of favor (darn you, mycotoxins!), but since the jars I brought back from my parents' house were primarily the threadless ones meant for wax seals, it was the best option for me this time. I had enough fun with sterilizing the jars and trying to melt the wax and keep the jam from bubbling over while fending off the "help" of a four-year-old with long arms and a stubborn streak a mile wide, without having to worry about processing the regular canning lids, too.

Oh, and Liza's decided that the jam smells funny, and she refuses to try it. Woohoo! More for me! It's not as good as the raspberry jam I made last year, but it will do in a pinch.