Plant gooseberries! (please)

In 2002 I went to Sweden for a plant conference and the friends I stayed with asked me to go out to the backyard and pick some gooseberries for a pie. I had no idea how thorny gooseberry bushes are (very!) but after tasting that pie I realized every prick from every thorn was worth it. And it was probably the easiest pie I've ever made: throw the berries in a crust, pour over a little flour and sugar, a few dots of butter, add a top crust (or not) and voila!

I've never forgotten how delicious it was. Which is why when a friend in my Master Gardener class said he had a gooseberry that had put out some suckers (young plants sprouting from the roots of the parent plant) I jumped at his offer to share! I planted the suckers last spring, and got a crop that very first year. This year the bounty has tripled or quadrupled.

Here are a few wonderful things about gooseberries:
1) beautiful to look at
2) delicious
3) grow in light shade (most fruits and vegetables need full sun)
4) good in containers (mine's in a half whiskey barrel)
5) deer don't eat them
6) unusual

So tomorrow I'm going to make gooseberry pie. It's truly seasonal, truly local, and what could be better than that?