On Friday, Isabel and I went strawberry picking. Lee-Anne was coming for the weekend and we'd decided to make jam.

Isabel was overjoyed at the chance to go strawberry picking. She loves it. I take her every year. Two years ago, we took her with disastrous consequences. Here's the weblog entry from my old weblog:

Sun Jun 22 18:40:06 2003
strawberries
we went to the strawberry farm today to pick some strawberries so i could make jam.
last year we took isabel and left her in her car seat at the ends of the rows while we picked them. this year we gave her a basket, showed her how to pick the ripe ones and crossed our fingers.

conversations i had with isabel at the strawberry farm:

"izzy, stop picking the green ones, we only want the red ones. you know what red means, don't you?"
"let me look in your basket..." (pulls out a green strawberry and throws it out) "izzy, that one wasn't red."
"izzy, don't pick up the squashed ones off the floor..."
"for the love of god, stop eating the ones you find on the floor..."
"you look like a serial killer."

We took her last year as well. If you have access to my Flickr you can see a picture here. Last year she was better, but still picked a lot of squashed ones.

This year she was golden. She picked nicer ones than I did! She had a boxful in less than ten minutes. While we were picking them, she said, "Mummy, I wish this day would last forever!" and "Please can I go strawberry picking as my birthday treat?"

Isabel's birthday is in November, so err, maybe not. Nevertheless I think we'll be going strawberry picking again soon. The jam we made was nice too!