When Nick recently asked me about these strange berries he sees on the bike path every day and I realized he was talking about mulberries I got very excited! So excited I started thinking about planting a bush in our yard. This is not to be done lightly, for two reasons:
1) An American mulberry "bush" ("Stop calling them bushes!" N yells in the background) is actually a very large tree (30-50ft tall). Hmmm.
2) They grow very slowly, and don't produce many berries to speak for ten years, according to The Farmer's Wife. One book I read said that you have to have a lot of faith in the future to plant a mulberry bush, because it is your children's children who will enjoy it in its full glory.
In the end, we visited these bushes that Nick found and I realized that mulberries are pretty good, but maybe not quite as fabulous in reality as in my mind. So I've decided not to plant any mulberries in my yard...yet.
Wow. That's a long wait. I understand now why I don't see more of these berries.
ReplyDeleteI love the idea of walking along a street and picking mulberries as I go along. They are not a dime-a-dozen, but I feel like I always encounter at least one in every city I've been in (even NYC).
ReplyDeleteA warning: do not over-eat, you may develop a bad allergy. I did. One summer, someone tried to woo me by picking quart-sized containers of them for me. I loved it. Both relationships (to the person and the mulberries) did not last the summer. I developed an allergy after that summer.
LOL. Imagine me planting one, watching it grow for ten years, and then developing an allergy!
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