Here in Canada, the most remarkable thing happens in the summer.

Instead of plants wilting and dying as they do in Arizona, they grow! And they don’t just grow. They thrive and blossom and produce fruit! Lots of fruit! Red fruit, blue fruit, one fruit, two fruit….you get the idea.

So, back when my mom was visiting (before we had sooo much homework), we all took a little trip to pick some strawberries.

 There are quite a few farms around us and the one we went to is called Krause Berry Farms. And those are fields…strawberry fields.

This is why we wash the strawberries before we eat them. Because strawberries spend most of their growing up weeks in the dirt, with the bugs and the spiders and everyone touching them.

This is what strawberries look like in the wild.

Look! My mom found a good one. You see, these strawberries try to fool the first time picker.

At first, because you’re from the desert, you are just so excited to be picking real strawberries that you grab at the first ones you see! So what if there is a bit of green on its side, or end, or all over. So what if it’s the size of a penguin’s webbed toe. It’s a strawberry!

But then, you go down a row or two and you realize that you have been fooled! You have to be patient and look hard for the big strawberries that are red all over. And if you are patient and look hard, you end up with something like this.

And this.

Now, the four-year old and the three year old didn’t quite get this concept. See exhibit A below:

BAD strawberry! It needs at least 2 or 3 more days in the sun. I had to stop myself from saying something like, ‘Susanna, why aren’t you an expert strawberry picker yet?’ But, you know, this is an acquired skill. Not everyone has it. Not everyone has it.

But look, at the end of the day, if you get pictures like this with your kids holding hands unsolicited and walking in between raspberry bushes, it’s been a good day.