Strawberry Thoughts ---> The Black Spot

Ok, so remember a couple years ago when I was all "Oh Farmville! swoon swoon"? Yeah well, F-Y-I....Farmville, SO not realistic!! I know, a shocker, right? Let's try The Cowboy's shock reaction: Lift your hands shoulder height, shake your head and say, "I'm shocked....shshshshocked." (Laughin' with ya, dear). Let me illuminate some major differences: so like on Farmville, I could just click away and harvest my strawberries in just a couple minutes. Then when I saved enough money, I bought a harvester (Farmville's version of a combine) and could harvest the berries in no time. Second thing...Farmville berries are always perfect. Another thing, never NEVER on my Farmville acres did I have to straddle deer doo-doo, battle ants or fight fungus.

The fungus I'm lookin' at is called Colletotrichum... & makes a black spot on the berry. I'm just picking along and the berries are saying, "I'm really beautiful, pick me." Then I look and **voila** a black spot. You know, dere are people like dat. Which brings me to my strawberry thought...

+++Buckle up, buckaroos, yer fixin' to travel into my brain and this ain't no sissy-pants ride neither...it'll be wilder than any 8 second ride. This is an adventure only heretofore experienced by my family: The Cowboy, Princess, Peach (the 3 of which you've heard about before) and the rest not before mentioned: Peach's husband Boy Wonder, our son The Deputy, his wife Honey (she's real sweet) and their kids Angel A and Baby E.++++

The black spot ...dun dun dun. When I cut up strawberries, I just cut off the black spot and **ta da** perfect...like it was never there. Like some of my berries, we all have a black spot (mine's real big). And God with His big forgiveness knife can cut that spot right off when we ask. I've ventured into my Sunday School Teacher mode...(I used to teach Sunday School to 6 - 12 year olds). My berries are all singing, "Just as I am and waiting not, to rid my soul of one dark blot...." Then we take our forgiveness knife out and lop that blot right off...dump the newly cleaned berries onto some homemade ice cream...AND EAT. Isn't God good?

Back to the strawberry patch: Bambi ate my berries and left a pile of poo. The cast of A Bug's Life moved in. And to make matters worse, the fungus is among us.