About 10 years ago I bought 3 strawberry plants. That was 2 plants too many. These things are fighters.
One day last week I glanced down to see a handful of beautiful–though oddly shaped–berries with bright green tips. Bitty G was napping and Bitty E in rest time (All Praise Be Unto The name Of The Lord) so I thought “we can pick them later.”
Then there’s dinner and bath and wheels on the bus and I-want-to-play-with-exactly-that-toy-at-exactly-the-same-second-you-have-it, and well, they got forgotten. Until the next morning when I woke Bitty E with an Irredeemable Parental Promise, or IPP as those of us who find ourselves unfortunate experts in this realm call it. {In case you find yourself fortunate, an IPP is the singular most stupid thing parents do on an unfortunately regular basis.} {Also: can I use some form of fortunate another time in this paragraph? Unfortunately not.}
The following is a list of items to never make a parental promise on, for it is sure to turn into an IPP:
1. weather
2. people in theme dress and whether or not they might approach you and try to wave
3. purchasability of certain types of lollipops in certain types of convenience stores
4. school attendance of specific friends or teachers
-and now-
5. predatory birds. {I’m looking at you, yellow finch…}
For, you see, those berries way back up there at the beginning of this terribly long story met an untimely demise. Bitty E responded to my IPP in pajamas and early morning sun to lift leaf after leaf while I stood by for the photo op. Gone. Picked clean. Every last one of them. Birds is my best guess. Momma not putting the leaves back in exactly the perfect position after she spotted them the day before is my second best guess, but really, lets keep the blame on the birds.
Bitty E’s response {let’s not call it calm…} tempted me to grab some berries from the plastic refrigerator container and scatter them about like Easter eggs in the yard.
But the birds or the clowns probably would have picked us clean of those too.
