remember spring?

I'm not one to complain, exactly, more like kvetch.  I like to think I'm placid but I'm not, really.  Right now I'm placid-aggressive, in despair but not noisy about it.  So I'm thinking about asparagus and strawberries. These days you don't have to go far to find such luxuries - used to be luxuries when they were rare treats..  Now they're available all seasons.  I can remember in the late spring, when the asparagus crops in Ontario were flourishing, how  heavenly it was to load a vegetable platter with all the colourful produce, the centrepiece of which was asparagus.  I used to love white asparagus, too, and revelled one springtime in Germany when the restaurants flashed their special neon signs - SPARGEL, SPARGEL, SPARGEL - and I could pig out on it.  And then I learned it had no chlorophyl whatsoever, no nutritional value at all, and felt so cheated.  Of course. A plant without sunshine is a plant without chlorophyl.  Another of life's little disappointments.

Strawberries are lovely, too, not only pretty but good for you, not as good as blueberries, though.  "They" say that blueberries are good for the memory. That conjures up a picture of the Tin Man, putting his finger to his head and coming up with a mathematical equation.  Eat a blueberry and memorize the Gettysburg Address with ease.  It wasn't easy.  I had to type it 47 times whenI was taking touch typing before I got it  error-free.  That had more to do with my eye-hand co-ordination of course, than with memory.  Anyway, strawberries: At the height of the season where they are indigenous, a bowl full of them makes the whole refrigerator smell of sugar.  That doesn't happen in January.  A strawberry in any other month does not smell as sweet. They're good dipped in chocolate, though.

Now chocolate you can count on.