Why don't blackbirds....

..... eat strawberries in September?

( this post will be a little footnote to one or two others posted in the last few days)

re - 'Seasonal Uncertainty'
Our strawberries are cropping again. Last year, the plants produced a large second crop but they did not ripen before the first heavy frost. This year, as more fruits formed, we wondered about lifting some and re-planting the strawberry pots in the greenhouse. Dithering about whether or not this would damage the crop, we ran out of time. The first crop always requires protection, in the form of netting, from the blackbirds. Lifting the netting to pick is tedious and I had been wondering about planting some in baskets in order to get them into the fruit cage - 'ground level' being too full! Weekends away would then pose a watering problem. Now even I can smell these latest strawberries as I pass by en route to the washing line - yet not one has been pecked by birds! Do they have some sort of peculiar dietary aide memoirs of the sort which prompts us not to eat oysters in the wrong months? and if so what harm do 'September-consumed strawberries' do since I don't intend to let them go to waste!

re - 'Serendipity'
A fellow folkster very kindly advertised the free availability of some wool fibres - left overs from producing hair falls. I was delighted when they arrived! Those which have been partly processed into hair falls are felted "ropes" of wool about 1 cm in diameter. Absently fiddling about with them I came up with the idea of using a textile centre to my chunky bangles. The present examples have a rolled fabric core but I plan some based on a center of felted wool. Thank you to Jane of Folksy shop GaiaNoir for the lovely gifts of wool and ideas!

re 'Cataloging"
I spent the latter part of yesterday happily thinking, in an unstructured way, about my 'New Venture'. Today I am just as happily planning, having resisted the impulse to rush in ill-prepared. A shop front will appear during the next few days with a message about the opening date. Items will be loaded in draft and then, hopefully, will be displayed with little additional effort on the date in question.

Now doesn't that sound neat and easy - I  wonder......... Off to stitch a banner - literally!!