Today, I wish to entice you with berries, all sorts of berries.

They dangle from their stems like red, blue, green and yellow jewels, some as sweet as honey, others spicy or sweet tart.

Berries are the essence of summer. You can't buy berries as good as those that you grow yourself, because none develop full sweetness and flavor unless thoroughly ripe, at which point they're just too tender to ship.

For example, Chester blackberries are so soft when dead ripe that merely picking them breaks the soft skin, staining your fingers with juice. Not a great commercial berry, but no matter: they need only travel two feet, to your mouth.

Berries are very easy to grow, requiring nothing more than sun, reasonably good soil and straightforward pruning. No sprays are necessary.

How many kinds of berries do you eat? Besides strawberries, early season berries could include juneberries. The fruits look like blueberries but are sweet and juicy, with the richness of sweet cherries and a hint of almond. And besides garden strawberries, consider also musk strawberries, tasting like a cooling blend of raspberry and strawberry, and pineapple-y flavored white alpine strawberries that keep bearing until frost.

Gooseberries, ripening next, are not all green and tart, as some people believe. Among the hundreds of varieties are some that are yellow, some that are red, some that are grape size, and some as large as small plums. And some are delectably sweet, their flavors hinting of plum or apricot.

That second wave of berries could also include blueberries -- highbush and lowbush -- as well as dark, aromatic clove currants, black raspberries, tangy white currants, and syrupy sweet mulberries.

When considering where to plant berries, you can look beyond the "garden." Consider using them also out in the landscape.

Lingonberry fruits, which ripen in fall, make an attractive, evergreen groundcover, the leaves providing a perfect backdrop for the red berries. Lingonberry mixes well with lowbush blueberries, not evergreen, but decorative with their bell-shaped, white flowers and stems that turn red in winter.

Juneberry and black currant make nice hedges, the former for its flowers and fall color, the latter for its lush greenery. Consider giving clove currant a prominent position right next to your terrace or deck so you can best enjoy the flowers -- yellow trumpets with a sweet, spicy aroma -- that precede the black berries.

My advice is to plant berries: they're easy, they're tasty, and some are borne on pretty plants.