Mulberry Splat

Just like John Scalzi, we have a mulberry tree in the yard, though in our case it’s hard not to notice, since we park under it.  I love mulberry trees, if only for the nostalgia factor, having grown up with a huge one in my grandmother’s yard.  The berries are fairly tasty, but neither as tasty nor as easy to use as many other fruits.  In their case, “for the birds” is more factual than dismissive.

So it is that we have branches laden with berries in varies stages of ripeness, or lack thereof, hanging over the cars and the driveway.  We have to walk through them.  Had Jimi Hendrix shared such an experience, he might have sung of purple feet rather than haze.

Our “scuse me while I kiss the ground” girls both felt compelled to pick up a berry, wanting to taste.  Which is fine in that they are edible, but yuck; they are ant food once they hit the driveway.

All of which brought up the topic of learning about such things.  I obviously learned at an extremely young age about blueberries, huckleberries, blackberries, checkerberries, and so forth.  I’d like them to learn that sort of thing, but initially the main lesson needs to be not to eat things off of random plants.  Or the ground.

As they get old enough, the more they know about what they can eat (or not!) in the wild, the better.  I always consider it a matter of potential survival if tshtf or the need to know otherwise arises.  The more a parent equips a kid with the skills and knowledge to survive and thrive, the better a job of parenting has been done, and to me that includes covering extreme conditions.  Kind of like testing software needs to cover the endpoint or extreme conditions.

1. Ah yes, late June and mulberries! I grew up with a mulberry tree out in the back yard. I liked mulberries, though it sure was a mess beneath that tree.

   Also, I grew up in the days when a dryer was an unthinkable luxury, so my mom hung the laundry out on the clothesline to dry. In the back yard. What with birds flying overhead, there were always “mulberried” items on the clothesline that had to be taken in and washed over again.

   Posted by Paul Burgess  on  06/23  at  09:20 AM  from 
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