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The high privilege of a perfect Washington strawberry

The moment is about to come, and it lasts only 12 days at most.

The high privilege of a perfect Washington strawberry

by

Peter Miller

The moment is about to come, and it lasts only 12 days at most.

You  have a week. They will say that you have a month but it is not so — you  have a week, 12 days at the most, to savor your Washington  strawberries. Twelve days or so before a laggard, sullen rain, later  than the others, cuts and soddens the plants.

In this very  specific, and this stunted year late, moment, if we catch any sun at  all, then there will appear this strawberry — a berry that is never  exported, that never sees a Thomas Keller table, even in California, a  strawberry so red and breasted with the rain of a too-long Spring, this  strawberry that bleeds its red as no other, it will open, in your town.

This  strawberry may be the true brilliance of this Washington. It is  the one that cannot be franchised, cut, divvied, mocked, boxed, coated  in chocolate, discounted, pasteurized, institutioned, neutered by  Microsoft, sous-vided by Nathan. They are too fragile, they hate travel,  they can only sit politely together. Compared to our once-prized  apples — apples that the King of Prussia demanded, " bring me a box of  those apples from Cashmere" — apples that are now so processed they look  near precisely the same and last well past seasons and taste only like  "an apple." Compared to the apples, these strawberries are a firefly, a  moment.

There have already been scouts of the strawberry, small  baskets of the fruit, that have seen little sun but came in advance  anyway.

But the body of them is enroute, perhaps this week. They  will be a little expensive but there will be plenty and you will never  imagine they would not still be in bulk for Independence Day. But they  shall never stay so long. They are like the ballet, rehearsing for  three months and on for two weekends, then off stage.

There will be other, similar  strawberries for all the summer. but not this one.

You can hold  them a bit in time by freezing, or saucing with sugar, or making jam and  they are happy allies for all such. But, for a moment of the next  couple weeks, take what is the very privilege of this place, that which  is only here and only for a moment, and enjoy the strawberry.

A friend says the best ones are from Sakuma Brothers farms, on Cook's Road near the south end of Chuckanut Drive. Japanese, of course, for it was they who grew the best of all, including the Marshall of fond recall and now almost gone.

There are  moments in Italy when all the town knows a fruit is at its magnificence. It is a good habit for a town, and a very good habit for a culture that  is rapidly paving its seasons.

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By Peter Miller

Peter Miller is owner of Peter Miller Books, a store in Seattle specializing in architecture and design books. You can reach him in care of editor@crosscut.com.