First of the strawberry harvest

A few weeks, or like a month ago, when we were up in Santa Barbara, my mom was nice enough to offer me a couple strawberry plants which had grown from runners off of their plants. I took 4 plants and then Ellie helped me plant them into some pots once we got home. Fast forward a few weeks and look what Ellie found...

She certainly was excited to find the ripe strawberry. Especially as it was on the littlest plant she helped put in the smallest pot, which of course means that this plant and all the strawberries it produces are hers.  We did discuss how the strawberry grew and we looked at the flowers and the little green strawberries. Ellie was fascinated about how the flowers turn into the strawberries and then they turn red and you can eat them! Fortunately between the strawberry plants that we have there were various stages of berry growth to illustrate the process to Ellie.

After getting a couple of photos of her with the first ripe strawberry in our new house I let her pick it. I'm pretty excited that we have strawberry plants producing actual fruit in our backyard. That's one of the best things about SoCal is the awesome weather for continuous gardening and fun outside. As most know, strawberries are probably one of my favorite things in the world. At least they are my favorite food. So you can understand how difficult it was for me to let Ellie eat the very first strawberry from our garden. But hey, I'm a mom, and that's what we do.
 

 She was pretty excited about it. 

At least she let me take photos of her eating the berry.

She said it was delicious. I said that the next strawberry was mine!