A certain taste for strawberries

It’s hard to imagine anything more summery than berries. Especially red, ripe, strawberries.

In that way, Dianne Cook, with her collection of strawberry themed collectibles and household items, keeps summer all year long.

Cook’s South Hill home is filled with her collectibles.

“This obsession only started about eight years ago, and I feel sure that by haunting the Goodwill and other thrift stores, I have bought all the strawberry stuff in existence, by now,” Dianne wrote in an e-mail to me.

Obviously, that isn’t the case. Her frequent shopping expeditions always net a new prize.

“Very rarely I go into an antique store,” Cook wrote. “But every time I do, I come out with more strawberries.”

She displays her collection throughout her home.

“I have nothing that isn’t displayed,” she wrote. “If I can’t find a place for it, it doesn’t stay. The collection has expanded from the living room, dining room and kitchen, to the bathroom, too!”

Cook’s strawberry décor has been a work in progress and she has been amazed at the way the collection has come together.

“My collection has all come to me one piece at a time and the thing I find so fun and interesting is that eventually, I always find the mate to sugar bowls, dishes, sets of ‘whatever’,” she wrote.

Cook’s collection anchors more than her interior decorating style. It’s an incentive to stay put.

“I hope to live here forever,” she told me. “It would be impossible for me to move all this!”