Monday, June 21, 2010

Mulberries: Free for the Taking

A sheet, a stick, and two colanders. That's all it takes to harvest one of the sweetest berries around this time of year. Chicago's rife with mulberry trees, and if you have a neighbor as generous as Claude, you just gather your tools and a couple friends and walk on over.

Claude's garden,
reminiscent of Monet's


The tree is heavy with fruit,
for now and the next time we visit
.
A couple sharp thwacks with the stick and the berries rain down into our linen.

Picking out twigs.

One of two colanders
we filled in no time.


Right now Bruce is putting a mulberry tart in the oven, same as last year. I'll opt for mulberries and cream myself, a perfect celebration of the summer solstice, unless he's sharing...

9 comments:

Gardener on Sherlock Street said...

Mulberries grew in my parents' shelter belt. I used to just eat them off the tree as a child. Yum. Summer.

H2 said...

We did a little tree eating today too, Sherlock Street. Why wait?

Unknown said...

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kisssusa.com

Brooks

Robj98168 said...

Everyone should have a Claude in their life!!!

H2 said...

I second that, robj...

Anonymous said...

Wish I could have kept my mulberry tree, but it was growing in a bad spot. Enjoy yours.

Robj98168 said...

H2- You need to send me your snail mail info so I can send you the copy of Stay. My email address is robj98168@yahoo.com

Rob said...

This is very interesting. We have a couple of Mulberry trees and I usually pick the berries with my fingers but your way seems much better and I will for sure be giving this method a try when my berries are ripe for picking.

H2 said...

Hi Rob:
Get a big sheet...