Rensselaer Standard, Volume 1, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 July 1879 — The Strawberry. [ARTICLE]

The Strawberry.

The following palate-thrilling encomium of the strawberry is from essays by John Burroughs: “Loeusts and Wild Honey”—“On the threshold of Summer, Nature proffers us this, her vergin fruit; more rich and sumptuous are to follow, but the wild delicacy and fillip of the strawberry are * never repeated—that keen feathered edge greets the tongue in nothing else. Let me not be afraid of overpraising it, but probe and probe for words to hint its surprising virtues. We may well celebrate it with festivals and music. It has that indiscribable quality of all first things—the shy, uncojlng, provoking barbed sweetness. It is eager aud sanguine as youth. It was born of the copious dews, the fragrant nights, the tender skies, the plentiful rains of the early season. The singing of birds is in it, and the health and frolic of lusty Nature. It is the product of liquid May, touched by the June sun. It has the tartness, the briskness, the unruliness of Spring, and the aroma and intensity of Summer. Oh, the strawberry days! how vividly they come back to one! The smell of clover in the fields, of blooming rye on the hills, of the wild grapes beside the woods, and of the sweet honeysuckle and spiraea about the house. The first hot, moist days: The daisies and buttercups, the songs of the birds, their first rockless jollity and love-making over: the fqll, tender foliage of the trees, the bees swarming, ana the air strung with resonant musical chords. The time of the sweetest and most succulent grass, when the cows come home with aching udders. Indeed, the strawberry belongs to the juiciest time of the year.”