June 6 — A happy day, on which the first berries were harvested from the Battery Rooftop Garden:

I’m not sure whether these are Fragaria “Sparkle,” “Allstar,” or “Seascape,” but in any case, eaten directly from the vine, they were soft, sweet, moist and bursting with strawberry flavor.   The vines themselves, in a mix of exposures, grown mainly as a ground-cover in the orchard, are the picture of health:

And, soon to come, will be my all-time favorite, fraise de bois, or for the botanically inclined, Frageria alpina:

And other berries are not far behind.  The second-year stalks of Rubus canadensis ‘Ouachita” (an early Blackberry, bearing in late June/early July), shows all the signs of a bumber crop:

And finally,  the Vaccinium corymbosum ‘Chandler,’ growing in the protection of Pelli Clarke Pelli’s remarkable curtain wall, immune (for the moment) to the predation of hungry birds, shows great promise: