Thursday, 7:30 AM. 56 degrees, wind NW, calm. The channel is calm, the sky mostly overcast, and the barometer predicts sunny weather.
The robins are thrashing about in the mulberry tree across the street, although the berries are still unripe on the lower branches. It is a white mulberry, Morus alba, of Eurasian origin. Originally it was brought to the West to feed the leaves silk moth caterpillars for a silk industry, which never developed. The trees escaped into the wild, and many were also planted for their fruit, which is bountiful and delicious.
Mulberries are seldom grown commercially, since the fruit is hard to harvest from the large trees, but many farmsteads had mulberry trees for fresh fruit and preserves. Joan recalls climbing high up into her aunts’ mulberry tree with her siblings and cousins, picking berries for pies and jelly, eating plenty in the process and becoming stained blue outside and presumably inside as well.
No comments:
Post a Comment