Meet Sweetie!

Please meet Sweetie - she's my 37 year old Sprenger Asparagus Fern.

Sweetie  was given to me as a very small plant several years before I had any children.  I nurtured and cared for her and waited for her to produce little white flowers and red berries as I knew she was supposed to do.  But she had a mind of her own and took her time in doing so.  As it happens I was also trying at the time to get pregnant, but unsuccessfully. One day I noticed that she did indeed have little white flowers and said out loud to her "If you can reproduce then so can I!"   And by golly, shortly thereafter, my daughter Wendy was conceived.

Just like Wendy, my fern prospered and grew.  During the 29 years Sweetie was in California she was always outside, either on the back porch or the stoop.  In those days I didn't always care for her as well as I do now. Sometimes I even forgot to water her, but miraculously she survived.  Then it was time to move to Idaho.

The friend who helped me move tried to make me leave the plant behind, but this one was not negotiable, she had to come!  Despite much grumbling from my friend, Sweetie was loaded into the trailer and made the big move.  Then, later when I moved to this little garden house across town, the professional movers also told me that they didn't move plants.  So I told them the story about how long I'd had this fern and how I got pregnant when she did.  Several minutes later I overheard them very seriously discussing how best to move the fern and how important it was for them to do so without harming it.  Never was a piece of furniture moved so carefully or so lovingly as Sweetie was that day.

Here in Idaho the winter is too cold for Sweetie to stay outside, so she spends 6 months indoors in my office by a bright window and 6 months outside on shaded the front porch.  Each year at Easter I take her outside and come Halloween I bring her back in.  Since she is now about 4+ feet in diameter, it takes some serious finagling to make room for her. Visitors regularly stop dead in their tracks when they spot this massive fern and always comment that they've never seen one so big.

I've tried to research how long these plants live, but have been unsuccessful thus far.  Regardless, she has played a significant role in my life for a long, long time.