It’s getting toward the end of strawberry season here in California. The neighborhood kids have all-day pink mustaches, and the farmer’s market has ruby red heaps of almost-too-ripe berries that you can smell when you’re within a block of the fruit awning. Friends who are good at making preserves buy them in huge baskets and months from now, we’ll get jam in pretty glass jars for birthdays and Christmas.

I’m sure there’s a metaphor here for writing: transforming beauty and simplicity into something sumptuous and delicious. Or maybe it’s about growing things. I found this article in my email inbox last week, about how Charles Goodrich grows not just plants but poems in his garden, how his relationship to gardens is also his relationship to words and to writing. He’s a creator of edible things – both literally and metaphorically.  Which is what Eat This Poem is looking for in their first annual poetry contest. There is lots of gorgeous writing about food (from Ruth Reichl’s Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table to Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen by Laurie Colwin) out there for inspiration, so if you love to write about food…here’s a great chance in a new venue. And if you’re a little shy about entering contests (I am, largely because of the cost), Nat Towers just passed on some good advice on his blog about how to decide whether a contest is worth it that you might want to check out. Regardless, however, of the particular creative endeavors you’re approaching this weekend, I hope something luscious and joyful is part of it~ Ina