We take part in so many activities and events that it’s hard to know which one to share with you each week. We have themed days that take weeks of planning, and we enjoy quieter moments with games of dominoes or yoga and meditation. We enjoy them all.

This week we were reliably informed that it was National Strawberries Day, seems an odd time of year to celebrate a summer fruit but I love strawberries, so I went with it.

I remember a time, not so long ago that we could only eat strawberries in summer, they weren’t available at any other time of year, a strawberry pavlova at Christmas was completely unheard of. We looked forward to June and spent two blissful months eating as many of these delicious berries that we could get our hands on.

I can remember strawberry picking with the sun shining down, trying to fill my basket as quickly as I could, so as not to burn my nose, competing to find the biggest berry and eating almost as many as I placed in my basket until Mother caught me. We would walk home carrying our hoard and spend a wonderful afternoon making jam.

As a treat for National Strawberry Day, we were presented with a plate of chocolate covered strawberries, chocolate and strawberry really are the perfect match and it didn’t take us long to work our way through the whole plate. We had a lovely afternoon, reminiscing about strawberry flavoured treats from our youth, about jam making with grandma and memories of our children with sugar covered lips and guilty faces.

We do so much here, life is never dull, and we are grateful for that, the day trips, the parties, the entertainers, and the games, they make life fun and interesting, and we look forward to them enormously but often all it takes, is interesting company, a nice cup of tea and a plate of chocolate covered strawberries to make us realise how lucky we are to be living at Hazel End.