The shortlived mulberry season has begun, and they are raining down by the hundreds while the dogs walk slowly around the tree trunks, hoovering them up. The backyard has both fruitless and fruiting mulberry trees, and, a bit rare, pale white mulberries that are especially sweet and taste far better than the dark berries. They are the last to ripen; the dark purplish-black berries ripen first.
Mulberries don't pull cleanly from the stem. The stem, a few millimenters long, stays with the berry. I just eat them, stem and all.
When I was young, I would use berries to stain my lips, like a lipstick. I think most young girls do that! With mulberries, they get stained unintentionally. The berries are very soft and are dewed with juice.
Besides using berries as lipstick, I remember making clover chains and dandelion crowns for "jewelry." We'd also use the dandelion blooms as "powder puffs" and powder our noses with the pollen. We would light matches and then blow them out, using the burnt ends as "kohl" around our eyes.
Sometimes, we'd smooth a patch of damp dirt, and pack it down tightly by bumping it with the heels of our hands. Then we'd scratch a "floorplan" into the dirt with a small stick. We'd get various blossoms and use them as the inhabitants of the "house" and play for hours, moving them here and there and chattering together as the story of the Flower Family would unfold. Sweet times!
Kind regards,
Olde Dame Holly
I enjoyed this post so much. When I was a child we had a huge Mulberry tree in the back yard but I can't remember where we were living at the time. My memories of playing outside are a lot like yours. Oh, such good memories. I started a post yesterday about playing outside and how Mama used to make clover chains for me.
ReplyDeleteI am looking forward to your post about playing outside!
Deleteyou are the first person ever to say you drew the house in the dirt and put flowers in it. my cousin and I played in dirt drawn houses all the time. we lived on a wide dirt road, no traffic, just the few people that lived in oak park. one day, w used bottle and old jelly jars and drew a big house of maybe 5 rooms. we drew furniture and picked beautiful crepe myrtle to stand in every room. Uncle Jim came home to find the street full of glass and his precios crepe myrtle. lets just say that was the LAST time. ha ha
ReplyDeleteOh dear, your dirt-drawn house was NOT up to code! Did you have to clean up the mess?
DeleteI used to do the same with dandelion when I was young.
ReplyDeleteWe only have mulberries in September and we make jam and tarts with them. Here they are on bushes.
I wish you a nice week.
I think those European mulberries are probably tastier. I think of that childhood rhyme, "Here we go 'round the mulberry bush, the mulberry bush, the mulberry bush! ~repeat~ So early in the morning!" We could hold hands and go around in a circle -
DeleteOh what delightful childhood memories!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteUsing a child's imagination!!!!
Which has probably been nearly completely lost today... Because of all the plastic toys, which squeek and talk and etc. No need of a child's imagination. -sigh-
Annnnnd, all the techy stuff! Again, no need of a child's imagination. -sigh-
What a delightful memory. What a horrid today.
Gentle hugs,
'Beside a babbling brook' blog
💛🌼🌻🌼💛
I prefer the taste of purple mulberries. Of course I like all mulberries. The white ones are usually much larger and that is a definite plus. When I was a child we used to make whipped cream out of evaporated milk and put it on the mulberries.
ReplyDeleteThat sounds like it would be very good!
DeleteI have never tasted mulberries they look a lot like black raspberries.
ReplyDeleteCathy
I loved this post. It sounds like what my sister and I would do, playing house with flowers.
ReplyDeleteI have never tasted a mulberry, I think they look yummy!
Carla
I remember having a mulberry tree in our yard when I was a kid in Texas. I seem to recall, as you mentioned, that they didn't have a lot of taste to them, but it was always fun to get a free treat from a tree!
ReplyDeleteFunny thing, my daughter just said today that from now on they're going to name their dogs after vacuum cleaners (Hoover, Dyson, Roomba, etc.) as we watched one of the family dogs cleaning up some crumbs from the floor. :)
Ha ha, they are like little vacuums, aren't they?!
DeleteYour mulberry tree sounds wonderful. Not sure if I've ever tried mulberries or not, but blackberries are a favorite, and I just bought blackberry jam. It's fun to hear what you used to do when you were young using the berries as lipstick and making clover chains. Very creative. Childhood is a time for imagination, and I remember my own playtime building dirt forts in the fields with the neighborhood kids. Oh, those memories are what makes us smile, aren't they?
ReplyDelete~Sheri
Thanks for sharing the memories!
ReplyDeleteI used to exhibit at a show in Indiana with a mulberry tree across the street. Those were new to me, and I learned the promoters put no one there to spare them mulberry stained canopies. I used to pick and eat them, right from that tree. Lovely.
ReplyDeleteThese look like black raspberries. Never had a mulberry but gramma B had a huckleberry bush. Loved her pies! Janice
ReplyDeleteI see many others left comments saying they hadn't ever eaten Mulberries. Who knows, maybe someday I'll get to try them. Meanwhile I'll settle for raspberries and Blackberries.
ReplyDelete