Fruit Dreams

This afternoon I took a break from work. I got my tea. I got my catalog. Before I opened it up, I was thinking that a gooseberry would be nice in the garden. I've long been dreaming of gooseberries. They are such beautiful jewel like fruits. I love the translucent pinks or the pretty greens. What clinched my desire for gooseberries was a trip this fall to visit my MIL.

My MIL has a house in Missouri. There aren't many places to go out to eat there, but one nice place is a local diner. I love diners. They always have comfort food: meatloaf, chicken pot pie, biscuits and gravy. Yum. In addition, most diners specialize in pie. All sorts of pies. We decided to take out several little individual pies and try them at home. One of these pies was a gooseberry pie. It was the best of the batch. Oh how good it was. Sweet, tart, in other words, just perfect. I want to be able to make those pies.

But gooseberries cost so much at the store if you can find them at all (usually only in the farmer's market). It's kind of like my raspberries. They grow like weeds out here so are easy to grow, but don't ship well so the cost is high. It makes the perfect fruit choice for the garden.

As I picked up my catalog, I quickly flipped over to their fruit section. Pinetree doesn't sell gooseberries. Sob. But they sell cranberries. Wouldn't that be fun to grow. I just bought two bags at the store for cranberry ice, but I could grow them instead. Or how about the hardy paw paws? I think those would be so tasty. Too bad they are a tree instead of a bush. I have no room for another tree. Ditto with the persimmons. Which got me thinking about my tree situation in general.

I was told that the two Norway maples out front were put in by the town and were on their property. When they widened the road in front of my house in August they put in temporary property markers. The two trees are on my property, not the town's. If only I had known that 17 years ago when I moved in. I could have cut them down and put up some fruit trees. I've dreamt of apple and peach trees for ages, with no place to put them. Now I'm adding on paw paw dreams.

And no I won't cut the maples down now. We are looking to move sometime in the next year, so I don't want to start cutting down trees and doing a major remodel. I'll save that for the new house. For now I'll leave the paw paws and apples to the dreams. The gooseberry might make it out of my dreams and into the garden. Time will tell.