A New Fruit

I have long desired to grow currants.  Not because of any virtue of the fruits, that I know of first hand - I have never eaten a currant, fresh or jellied.  What you buy in the grocery labeled "currant" is actually a little raisin.  But I have read of currants, and all the descriptions use adjectives such as "gem-like" and "jewel-colored."  For a few years I have stared at one ugly spot in the back of my garden, envisioning a line of currants there:

Can you see it?  In five years or so a wonderful hedge will hide the decrepit back fence and the compost pile, and that hedge will bear gem-like fruit in jewel tones.  Or it is so in my dreams, at least.  If you look closely, you can see the currant babies, three of them (two red, one white, no further detail given), planted just at the shade line inside the vegetable garden, snuggling with the yet-to-be eaten cardoon.

Up close they are scraggly looking things.

That's the pull of gardening, really - the hope that somehow this ugly slip will grow and bear magical fruit.  It's every fairy tale ever told.