I ate it

I've been very remiss on the blogging front lately, and I left readers hanging after the cliffhanger ending - will she or won't she? - of my last post. I know this, because I've had people I never knew read my blog coming up to me, at parties and weddings, asking if I ate the strawberry.

The short answer is yes.

The longer answer is that although I loved the idea of leaving a note, I published that post and then immediately left town for the weekend. By the time I got back, the strawberry had already reached and then passed ripeness, and had a couple of mushy spots. I could easily tell that, if its owners still existed, they were not going to harvest their strawberry, so I picked it, cut off the mushy spots, and ate it. It wasn't very good.

After that, I felt free to pick and eat and of the other strawberries when they ripened. (I think I got 3, total.) None of them were fantastic, but I wasn't expecting much from a plant in a too-small pot which got only afterthoughts of water all season. I'm still glad they didn't all go to waste.

Ethical Dilemmas

Last summer, I was not the only gardener on our rooftop. Midway through the summer, three pots showed up, much prettier than my reclaimed versions. However, they were horribly overcrowded. 

The small pot in the back had four pepper plants, and the big one in the middle had both an eggplant and a strawberry plant. I can't remember what was planted in the medium pot in the foreground. When I finally ran into the gardeners, I didn't have the heart to tell them that they hadn't even planted their strawberries until long after strawberry season was over, not to mention that there was no way there was enough room in those little pots to grow all those different plants. Besides, I was pretty much a novice at this myself - who was I to correct someone else? I think they got one pepper on one of their pepper plants, and that was the extent of their harvest.

Now, I'm pretty sure that last summer's gardeners are not gardening this summer. I haven't seen them over the past few weeks, their pots haven't been moved an inch since I put them back after the hurricane,* and last season's dead stalks haven't been removed. But . . . they're not all dead stalks. The strawberry plant is still alive, and this year - in season - it's bearing fruit.

When I noticed it flowering, I started watering it occasionally. I haven't babied it, but whenever I've had a bit of extra water after I'm done taking care of my plants, I've given it a drink. Now it's got four strawberries, one of them approaching ripeness. 

Like I said, I don't think the couple who planted it are still paying attention. They may not even still live here. Or I could be wrong. I could have missed them. Maybe I've just been giving this plant extra water, because its owners have been taking care of it all along.

I'm pretty confident that's not the case, but I can't be sure. So the big question is:

Do I eat the strawberries?

Let me know what you think in the comments!

Doesn't it just look good enough to eat?

*Being the only person to spend so much time on the roof gives me a feeling of responsibility for it. When Hurricane Sandy was approaching, I pulled all of my pots in off the roof, but felt like I couldn't leave everything else up there to become projectiles, so I pulled in the other pots, too, as well as all of the chairs (whose origins and ownership are uncertain). Then I put it all back where it came from.