mulberries

[asakiyume]

The two berries I used to pick and eat as a kid were mulberries and black raspberries (a different fruit from blackberries--we had no blackberries where I grew up but plenty of black raspberries). Black raspberries grow on prickly canes, and you can find them in abandoned lots and beside railroad tracks. I was a pro at finding places to pick them.

Mulberries grow on trees. When I was a kid, there was a copse of three or so sapling-sized mulberry trees on my street, at the edge of someone's property, and we used to walk by them and pick the berries off. Not as flavorful as black raspberries, but pleasantly sweet.

Now all but one of those mulberry trees is gone, but that one tree! It's huge. The berries are waaaay up high, out of reach, but I saw a mourning dove enjoying them. And they fall from those high, high branches down to the street.

grand mulberry tree



mulberries



These berries, though, come from a different tree, across the way. You can see below that the berries on this tree are more in reach ;-) (I don't recall this tree from when I was a kid--I think we just preferred being on the other side of the street for our collecting.)

the tree across the way

Comments

[wyld_dandelyon]

Also, when we do a campfire in the back yard (real wood tastes better than store-bought charcoal for a cookout) we often use mulberry while cooking. It gives it a nice flavor.

[asakiyume]

Yes! I can believe that! I'm a convert to using berries (and fruit generally) in savory cooking--it **does** give a nice flavor.

[wyld_dandelyon]

The berries do work in cooking -- but I was talking about burning the wood under our hamburgers or whatever! We have a lovely cast-iron grill that perches over our brick-lined fire pit for that.

[asakiyume]

Oooh, that sounds nice too--as does your whole fire-pit set-up!