My first Irish Strawberry!

This lovely evergreen tree is one of the ones I most love in our garden. It came with the house! The previous occupants of our little bungalow lived here from when the house was built, and they were keen gardeners. I worry that, since buying the house, we have let the garden get terribly overgrown. We have been a bit busy with our two little seedlings inside the house, but now that the weather has turned cool, I'm looking forward to getting my fingers in the soil and tidying up our patch of earth.

Anyway, this tree. Despite my disavowal of gardening work, this tree does get a pretty regular pruning, of sorts, as I love the waxy evergreen leaves as foliage in my cut flower arrangements. The fruits though are something else. They start life as delicate little bell shaped flowers, not dissimilar to orange blossoms, though neater and not fragrant. They puff out to spiky little yellow orbs and then, over the course of a short few days, bloom into a dark, rusty red. The fruit inside remains a deep yellow.

I'm hoping I'll get enough between now and Emme's birthday to make a jelly for sweets. These old fashioned varieties of fruit really don't get much attention anymore but I would love to hear from anyone who also has access to Irish strawberries. What do you do with them?