Hogging the bed

It's raining now, and I'm enjoying the smell of rain, the cool breeze through the slider, the sound of the thunderstorm rolling away to the northwest, and the knowledge that I won't have to water the garden in the morning. The last few days have been hot and dry, and I've been watering a lot.  Last night I left the hose on a trickle in the strawberry bed for half an hour, the first time I've watered the strawberries this year.
 My strawberry bed, planted three years ago, was  originally four feet square.  Last year I lost a lot of berries to mold because the weather was wet.  I almost wept as I pulled fuzzy mold covered fruit after fruit out from under the mounds of serrated strawberry leaves.  During the following summer and fall  the strawberries expanded into the adjacent vegetable bed, tossing runner plants over the six inch wooden boundary, each runner linked to the original plant by a thin green stem.  Soon they were in the straw of the pathway too.
  Now my strawberry bed is eight feet long by six feet wide, and packed with ripe and ripening berries.  In early spring I spread saltmarsh hay between the plants to keep the fruit off the ground and reduce mold damage.  Two weeks ago I made a frame to protect the bed from birds using two ten foot long, half inch wide PVC pipes anchored to rebar. I covered this frame with bird netting which is weighed down along the edges by scrap wood.
  Getting into this contraption to pick berries takes a while, but so far the effort has been worth it.  I've picked a quart of berries each night for the last three nights, and I'd be out there now if it wasn't raining.  Picking regularly is important, not only to get as much of the fruit as possible at peak ripeness, but to make sure any even slightly moldy berries are removed before the damage can spread.
  This rain is good for the garden, including the strawberries, and it will fill my depleted rain barrel.  But I hope it is dry tomorrow, and I can get into the strawberry patch to pick.  I grow raspberries for my husband, but the strawberries are for both of us. Vanilla ice cream with fresh strawberries warm from the garden is worth all the work.