We have fallen nicely into a routine in Wengen Switzerland. We live leisurely in the morning. Reading, writing, admiring our surroundings. I eat a small breakfast of muesli, blueberries, nuts, and fresh milk. An hour or so later, Tony's hunger awakes. We dress and we begin the morning hike up the mountain to the Coop grocery and the bakeri. We either eat our quiche or pastries at the outside table, or bring our goods home to eat on plates and sliver-slice with a sharp knife.
On these morning foraging walks, we pass a garden where on the very edge, alpine strawberries grow and spill over the stone edge. I am tempted every morning to pinch off an alpine strawberry, but of course, I don't.
An alpine strawberry is the size of a thumbnail. It is an intense little punch of sweetness. I love them. My daughter discovered them years ago and has them in her garden. I have them in mine. Seeing them in a Swiss garden has brought new and more literal meaning to "Alpine."
We left our home at the height of strawberry season. Before leaving, I wrote this lamentation to what I would be missing.
Written the day before I left for Switzerland:
I finish swimming. I usually hurry inside to avoid grass pollen but I won't be seeing the garden for three weeks. I want to see it in its nascent stage: the tiny tomato plants like mice in big cages. The low lying peppers. The few leaves on the zucchini plant. The weeds that will be unattended for three weeks. The few grape leaves that made a comeback after the late freeze. There is clover wandering is way into the raspberry patch. I feel the urge to pull it, but it will grow fast while I'm gone. The big roots and tops will be easier to pull when I return.
After three weeks the garden will amaze me--like it does every year if I am absent even for a week.
I used to hire help to keep the weeds at bay, but now I leave it on its own and the weeds like naughty children will disarray the house in their mother's absence.
Today before I go, I walk up the flagstone steps, the railroad ties breaking down, a reminder that I paid my future son-in-law and his friend to terrace the backyard when they were still in high school.
Today there is a surprise! A parting gift, a transplanted strawberry under the peach tree, has three tiny berries dangling from a stem. I pick each one. Each one a burst of strawberry sweetness. I move to the big patch. More surprises! I snatch them; I enjoy them.
They will be gone when I return. I text my daughter. When you come swimming, check the strawberry patch. Cove will love it! Last summer, just a one year old, she chomped down every strawberry in the garden. For a child to step through a strawberry patch and pick a berry that goes straight to her mouth--that is wealth.
Two weeks pass before our daughter comes swimming with her friends. The two year old is left at home, so they can lounge like they did when they were seventeen year olds about to enter their last year of high school. She will water our plants, bring in the mail, and I hope, she will pick the strawberries and take them home.
But I worry. Left unpicked, the pill bugs will become squatters and reapers of nature's candy. I will come home to half nibbled berries.
We are about to leave for our morning hike to the bakeri. I will pass the alpine berries, unpicked at the side of the path. I will think of my own berries at home, feeding the earth's creatures in my absence.
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