Tuesday, April 21, 2020 The Raspberry Queen

I’m going to tell you a heartwarming story with a happy ending.

Once upon a time there was a merry band of red raspberries. These raspberries were all bush-mates, sprung from the same group of canes in a backyard in southern-ish Minnesota. In the springtime of their lives, they were white and hard. Summer came and the warm weather and sunshine blew them up into pleasingly plump blushing red beauties. Those were happy days…until the birds and the evil raspberry beetles began their onslaught of terror. Each day the berries would look at one another, knowing that many of them might be ravaged and pecked at before the day was done. Their only hope was that the Raspberry Queen would come and gently pick them off the canes before these marauders could destroy them, leaking their lifeblood on the leaves. Just when all seemed lost, the RQ began coming every morning, basket in hand, to save the day. She greeted them with words of love: “Hello, my little darlings!” and sang a sweet raspberry picking song while she rescued them from their hopeless plight.

They were glad, yes, they were glad, when the Queen put them carefully on a large tray, one by one. They were exceedingly glad when they felt the cooling air of the freezer. When at last they were gathered into great groups and put in bags, they nestled together happily and in that delightful dark and cold place, they rested.

When the time of their resting had been fulfilled, they were resurrected to new life by being sweetened with sugar, refined with heat, and poured into jars, an ending to which all raspberries do indeed aspire.

And that’s what I did today: resurrected the raspberries to new life in jam jars. Don’t worry – I won’t let the title of Raspberry Queen go to my head.

I’ll probably delete this in the morning, whilst eating toast with raspberry jam. Yum.