It's Alive!, It's Alive!, It's Alive!

A lifestyle garden is all about simple pleasures, especially the many tiny simple pleasures of a day to day life. One of those simple pleasures is the discovery in the spring that the questionable plant you put in last year actually made it through the winter. The tiny sprouts pictured above represent one such pleasure. It is the sprout of a groundcover raspberry (sold as: Rubus arcticus subsp.x stellarcticus) I bought last year from a mail order nursery that did not evoke much confidence in me. But the nursery had this curious plant that was said to have been developed in Sweden and would grow as a groundcover in a wide variety of conditions while producing a crop of raspberries. Its description was irresistible to me, and I couldn't find anyone else offering it (which also made me suspicious), so I took a chance. The plants arrived in horrible condition. I fussed over them until they became established, but a few never did. Throughout the summer the survivors grew modestly. I continued to wonder if they were going to amount to anything or were they just part of yet another exaggerated marketing claim. Seeing them emerge this spring has given me some assurance that at least they are viable plants. Now we will have to see if they produce those promised raspberries.