Next year: Raspberries!

Last week we created a spot to plant raspberries.  Before even the bed was finished and filled with dirt, I started searching online and local greenhouses for raspberry plants.  And I found out that the middle of June is NOT the time to be looking for raspberries.  Not a plant to be found.

But then, on Leann's drive to Mayo Hospital in Rochester with her sisters earlier this week (more on this later), she stopped at our friends J & H in Bloomington (MN) and guess who had raspberry bushes that needed to be thinned out?  So they gave us 12 raspberry plants!  (Thank you!)

Yesterday we got them planted after selling at the Saturday Market in the morning, attending the Swedish Midsommer Fest at church around noon, and then my cousins' 50th wedding anniversary party later in the afternoon.  (It was a big day!)  

Then today Leann put down straw around the plants and mulched the rows.  Now we just have to keep them from trying to grow berries this summer so they will be ready next year.

Update on Kristi:  The news was very good this time.  Her eight weeks of chemo made the spots of cancer in her lungs all but disappear, and partially shrunk the other nodes in her pelvis.  So she's starting up 8 more weeks of chemo tomorrow and then will be checked again at the end of August.  And based on everything the doctors could see, the one doctor who was so pessimistic last time said she would have "many more years" to live.  So, thank you from Kristi and her family to all of you for you prayers and positive thoughts!