What strawberry?

Earlier this year, in a fit of nostalgia for his childhood, James bought a strawberry plant for our garden. [Just the one plant ... I don't expect we're going to be over-run with fruit!].

Then, when I saw that my DT Quirky Kit [from Crafty Templates] contained strawberry themed paper, ribbon and embellishments everything seemed perfectly placed for me to produce a summery layout featuring the summery fruits on the summery papers. I think that perhaps I forgot for a moment that our lone strawb is experiencing a British summer ... and they're not famed for their especially 'summery' characteristics.

Our fruit has not yet ripened and to be honest I don't know how long we'll have to wait for it to do so. But being the good, conscientious Design Team member that I am ... [Bev at Banana Frog has another word for it ...but won't go into that...;)] I was eager to make another layout in order to showing the kit in all it's glory. So, I braved the mild temperatures and threat of showers of a mid-June-afternoon- in-England and marched into the garden, camera in hand to capture a photograph for this:

OK, so they're not exactly the juicy red berries I was hoping to scrap but, to paraphrase that popular saying about lemons, my philosophy was ...'when life gives you a mild Northern hemisphere climate that just won't ripen your strawberries in time to fulfil your design team obligations ...make a cute layout all about that same mild Northern hemisphere climate that just won't ripen your strawberries in time to fulfil your design team obligations'. Granted, it's not as catchy a saying as the original ...but it got a layout made and that's all that counts!

[Earlier in the week I also created some everyday stationary items using the very sweet, custom-made 'Cute Strawberry Label' acrylic stamp and I wrote about it here on the Crafty Templates blog.]

I know what you're thinking .... how're the strwbwrries doing now after 3 more days of ripening? You want to know if we've cracked open the double-cream and Pimms yet don't you? Well ....no we haven't ....and we won't anytime soon either.

Yesterday I went to check on it's progress, hoping to see a rosy glow poking out of the foliage and do you know what I saw instead?

Nothing.

I suspect a fruit-loving bird has also had it's eye on our one and only vaguely red berry ... and what's that other saying?? Ah, that's right ....the early bird catches the partially ripe fruit, sprinkles it with a little caster sugar, sits back, eats it and then hides in the grass laughing at the entirely befuddled human staring at the empty space where the first pinkish strawberry used to be ....