Cherry’s adventures are—by design—shorter and simpler than Mark’s, since the strip is called Mark Trail and not Cherry Trail (or is it Cherry Davis?). Doesn’t mean they have no substance to them, but a fair bit of detail and storyline has to be abbreviated or merely hinted at, as we are seeing here. Still, I think it is worth giving credit to Jules Rivera for the innovation of maintaining two parallel, but different, storylines. I cannot recall any other strips trying to do this, at least this clearly.

As for today, it seems that Cherry’s subterfuge has just been kicked by Violet. It’s interesting that Cherry referred to the backyard as a garden. It certainly looks like a field of grass to me. On the other hand, people overseas usually refer to their back yards as gardens, even if they do not have a traditional flower or vegetable garden. One Italian word for backyard is il giardino.