The Sweet Dark

What to do when life speeds too quickly, when decisions loom, and changes come--ready or not?  Why, chuck it all and go strawberry picking, of course.  Twenty minutes, a couple of quarts, then home for homemade biscuits and whipped cream, and loads and loads of berries.  The ones we picked were ripe, of course, but  the very small ones just turning pink look lovely out there in the field.  They always remind me of William Morris's "Strawberry Thief," which I believe is one of the most beautiful patterns ever created.  Can a humble blogger declare such things?  Well there, it's done.  

 

Then last night, as I was preparing to clean the rest of the berries (okay, as I was watching Torchwood on Netflix fully planning to clean the berries in an hour or two), the electricity went out.  For those of you who are new to this blog, I live in a massive nineteenth-century textile mill, so when the electricity goes out at night, this cavernous place gets rather spooky.  The elevator stops working and the stairwells are nearly pitch dark.  I imagine no one living our building was too happy last night.  No one except me.  I lit all the candles in our place and set to work cleaning the strawberries by candlelight.  I felt a bit like a strawberry thief myself, paring off their tops, eating nearly as many as I dropped into the bowl, there alone in my kitchen in the sweet dark.