It was 1981. We were courting. I had never had a garden, and he had kept them in California and in Iowa. I was a new home owner. It was fall and time to plant perennials. He offered to go to the garden store and help me pick them out.
We strolled along the aisles and came to a bin of asparagus. "Let's plant some asparagus," he said.
"Don't asparagus take two or three years to bear?" I asked.
"Yes," he said. We picked up several packages and strolled on. In a bit we came to the blueberries. "Shall we plant blueberries?" he murmured.
"Don't blueberries take seven or eight years to bear?" I asked.
"Yes," he said. We carefully picked two different varieties (for cross fertilization), paid for all our treasures and headed back to plant them, and wait.
Those first blueberries grew, slowly, but they never bore fruit at that first house. When we moved just before the birth of our second child, we moved the surviving blueberry bush. It lingered a while and I finally gave up and saved it for an Easter egg tree. A year or two later my birthday present was to come back from a meeting to find an odious spruce tree cut down. We planted two new blueberry bushes on the site, covered their roots with pine needles, and doused them with ammonium sulfate.
Now, some years later, we harvested twenty pounds or more from the bushes so far this year. Son who was in utero when we moved into this house and girl friend delight to pick them (very handy!) and every time we enjoy them, I think of those words: "Shall we plant blueberries?"