Well, it’s here again. Mulberry season. The fifty-year old black mulberry in our front yard is fruiting, dropping hundreds of juicy dark purple berries to the ground below it. This is the time of year when our friends know to come to the back door instead of the front. Cars passing in the street make purple tire tracks, and the mailman leaves sticky footprints as he walks up to deliver the mail.
At least after twelve years of this my husband no longer makes noises about cutting the tree down. He rolls his eyes a lot, but that’s allowed in any marriage. He good naturedly uses the hose to wash down the path every couple of days, but otherwise he does his best to ignore the whole mess.
Me, I’m out there every morning with a little pail, picking mulberries for breakfast. Boy, are they delicious over cereal. And with ice cream? Divine! This year we’ve had a long cool spring with plenty of rain in May, and the fruit seems sweeter and juicier than I can ever remember.
The first week the mulberries were ripe, the cedar waxwings showed up right on schedule. These sleek birds with soft voices travel in flocks and always seem to have a sixth sense for where the eating is best. There are more berries than even they can account for, however.
You can just imagine how many fall to the grass beneath the tree. There is no lusher, softer grass anywhere on our property than what grows in the shade of that tree with its annual dose of mulberry fertilizer.
It’s been quite a few years since I made any jam, and I plan to rectify that in a few days. I posted the recipe on this blog in one of my very first posts, in fact. I think once again, as I do every year, that the mess is small price to pay for such generous abundance. The tree reminds me of the giving tree in the story by Shel Silverstein. It only wants to give what it can: shade, fruit, and a nice place to sit.
Once the mulberry season is over, of course.
I envy you your tree, and the lovely white sheet beneath it. We got our mulberries by hand picking them at the edge of a mall parking lot. My 4 year old grandaughter, picking for the first time, was just tickled by the whole thing. I brought her back to her mother with white pants stained purple forever and a smile a mile wide. We just finished making the jam, and I was looking for an image for the lid when I came across your blog. Very nice!