The Strawberry Hibernation
She Had Light. She Had Space.
The strawberries are flowering. What started as a few green leaves unfurling in spring snow has bloomed into a riot of flowers. I can already see white petals scattered on the ground. The first fruits are forming. It’s encouraging.
Last spring I bought a strawberry plant on impulse at a local garden center. I don’t know much about berries, but it was on sale and I had room in my tray. I figured I’d stick it in a spare corner of the garden and take the $3 risk.
It did well over the summer, spreading and rooting tendrils every which way. That one plant expanded, flowered, and grew the most delicious sun-warmed ripe berries... I never tasted anything like it.
By late August, one of the off shoots was getting crowded, shadowed by the basil bushes nearby. As a homesteader who goes through winter alone, I know my own when I see them.
I knew if I didn’t change her situation she’d die from darkness or congestion. I gently uprooted the shoot, brought her inside, and rehoused her on a windowsill in a crude planter carved by a chainsaw.
It fit my own story: scrappy but hopeful.
She had light. She had space. Maybe that’s all she needed to thrive?
Summer turned to fall. Fall turned to winter. The strawberry plant remained the same as the day I plucked her; green, stunted, and stubborn. She never grew or flowered, just waited. If she had a heart monitor it would give off the steady, slow, beat of someone in a coma. Relatable.
I didn’t know strawberries could hibernate? Don’t laugh, I’m from places so cold that the idea of anything green surviving 12-months without pine needless is laughable.
My house isn’t exactly a temperate wonderland. Every February morning I expected to find her brown and shriveled, but even when ice was forming in the dog bowl on the kitchen floor her leaves didn’t turn yellow.
She outlasted the winter. All those horrible dark months she stayed true. She didn’t blossom, but she remained. And as The Wheel turned on the other side of the glass, she felt the days grow longer, the light grow stronger.
I guess if you you wait long enough, hope is inevitable?
Last week I planted her back in the strawberry patch with her kin. She’s out there right now, in the center of it all. There is nothing to shade her anymore. I keep her weeds down and roots moist, surrounded by a cloud of my ewes’ wool as mulch. Now that summer is a prayer away, she’s already double in size. I am so proud of her I can’t help but smile when I walk past. I already filled two freezer bags with rhubarb for a summer pie when she’s ready.
It will be the best slice of pie I ever ate.
That strawberry plant kept me going through winter because I saw myself in her. Doing whatever she could to survive when she accepted she couldn’t flourish.
Living like this for so long—a mountain homesteader with a 100-day growing season—I have also learned to stop trying to grow in the dark. Samhain through Ostara (Nov 1- March 20), I’m also stunted and resting.
I can only focus on making it to spring, keeping busy with the anxiety of staying safe and dreaming of fireflies. Sometimes I get so sad it feels like there’s nothing inside my ribcage but cold wind. Yet, every year when summer comes back, I feel that empty place filling back in with my big stupid heart and strong lungs. I can exhale, not just hold my breath.
I think that’s the best way to describe my religion. Hope, Safety and Warmth.
She had light. She had space. That’s all she needed to thrive
And I hear if you wait long enough, hope is inevitable.
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This was quite moving for me. Strawberries are...important to me. Deeply tied with my ex and that decade of life. I don't know that I am yet capable of thriving, even two years on from the split. The thrill of Spring, of Summer - I have not yet felt this trill in my chest or my soul again, not yet.
May it come soon. I hope I am just a biennial - type, but I have already had one season where I did not bloom this time around. That said, I am still a stubborn little weed, sticking my head up through the cracks in the rocks I was buried under.
May your strawberry give you the best, juiciest, sweetest fruits!
I was just telling a friend that every year I am shocked by how alive and happy I feel in May—my hibernation period tends to be January through at least part of April. (I live in New Hampshire, and April tends to be very unpredictable these days.) Every year I am surprised.