In My Own Backyard

It's starting to feel alot like spring here in Wisconsin.

The apple blossoms are struggling to fight off some lolly-gagging morning frosts, but the days are emerging radiantly warm and sunny.

This time of year exemplifies that "hope springs eternal." Despite its troubles, life never seems to give up on trying to renew itself. Appropriately, all the new growth of the season marks the time as a harbinger of the many good things to come.

Like babies of every species, and trees, fruits, flowers, plants and grasses. No withering now; everything is smoothly-skinned and pliable, because life is just beginning and it's all good.

The inhabitants of a country property should know enough about the plant-life on their place, but twenty-some years into here we are still pretty clueless. We know enough to avoid poison ivy and stinging nettle on the skin, and we've successfully tapped maples for syrup and transformed wild plums, apples and berries into yummy preserves. We recognize a great many birds and critters, and some of their calls and sounds. Mostly, we enjoy what we see and hear and use what we're certain of to modest degrees. After all, wild creatures need to eat too.

One berry bush that we failed to identify is the source of a funnily ironic story. Until recently I was the proprietor of a shop and cafe, "Corner Cupboard," where we worked hard to establish a small but strong following for handmade, from-scratch pies. One customer, Tom, often drove in from his outlying town to have a light lunch with us and a full wedge of pie. We always loved to see Tom--such a dapper guy, friendly and conversational always in a most appealing way.

A great promoter of my place, Tom poked his head into the kitchen one day to tell me that he would soon be treating a special friend to lunch at Corner Cupboard. This friend had a quirky inclination to always ask the server at any restaurant for one particular pie--gooseberry.

He had yet to receive a "Yes, we have gooseberry pie," answer, but this never deterred him from trying wherever he went. Tom's request to me was that whatever it took, he was willing to pay any price for a gooseberry pie on board when that lunch took place.

None of us had ever made a gooseberry pie, or even tasted one. I'd never noticed the fruit in a store and of course when I looked, it wasn't there--not in the frozen or canned aisle, and not in the fresh produce section either. 

That next Sunday my husband drove me to an eastern "burb" of the Twin Cities. After a few stabs in a melange of stores, I did find gooseberries in a high-end gourmet grocer's market. I was worn out from the trek through various unfamiliar stores, so the fact that they were only available in cans did not stop me from grabbing the only two that were on the shelf. I realized beggars can't be choosers, but I certainly didn't pay a beggar's price for them.

When the big day arrived, my pie-maker turned out a beautiful speciman, even if we were all put off by the filling that had gone into it. Do you know what gooseberries look like? They are round and green and look like slimy globules in questionable goop (in a pie)--not an appetizing sight whatsoever to any of our eyes.

But we figured Tom's friend knew his gooseberry stuff. He would happily expect them to look this way, and not be able to contain his gushing over the thrill of it all. The three of my whole staff were so excited we all managed to place ourselves in the vicinity for his, "Do you have gooseberry pie?" inquiry.

The question happened as predicted, but his response couldn't have been more different than we had imagined. No light sparked in his delighted eyes, no beaming smile of disbelief crossed his lips. Instead came a flat and to-the-point "Okay, I'll have a piece," statement, one void of all the enthusiasm we had so braced ourselves for.

The crescendo of our anticipation descended its incline so abruptly we could almost hear the "whoosh" of deflation. The fellow quietly enjoyed his pie, and asked for another piece to take home. Tom purchased the remainder, and our adventure was over.

We weren't so big about it that we didn't mutter a few expressions of disappointment over our anti-climatic experience, but we agreed that it probably paled compared to Tom's. We were sorry to see that his gleeful plans and benevolent plotting went unrewarded.

A few weeks later, my granddaughter was trail-hiking our place with the neighbor boy, a knowledgeable little guy when it comes to identifying creatures and plants of the natural world.

They stopped to pick small berries I'd never noticed before--or if I had, had probably avoided in a "better safe than sorry" mode.

But on this day my granddaughter was encouraged to try these "perfectly safe" GOOSEBERRIES--a tried and true fruit the boy knew well.

Gooseberries

To think: we'd traveled a distance we didn't commonly go, and paid a price we found ridiculously high--all for something that grew right in our own back yard. Now THAT'S ridiculous.

There's alot to learn on a country place, and it really pays to learn it. I like to think that the waste and cost of that experience was still an experience, and one that taught me a lesson: Know what you have, or pay the price of ridiculous.