They *ARE* My Daughters!
After all this time watching my Toddler happily eat dill pickles, olives (all varieties), beets, eggplant, and a host of other foods I don't like, I finally have proof that her tongue does, in fact, bear some genetic resemblance to mine:

She loves mulberries ...and so does the Baby.

There is a big old Black Mulberry tree that has been on our farm since I was my daughter's age, as well as a relatively new one which sprouted up next to one of the ostrich pens a few years ago. I have many fond memories of our family going outside when I was a child, each of us holding a bowl of ice cream, and picking mulberries right off the tree and dropping them into our bowls. (We used to do the same thing with raspberries later in the season.)

My grandmother made *The Best* mulberry jelly on Earth -- to this day the only jelly I can stand to eat is a mixed forrest berry jelly imported from Austria -- nothing else tastes remotely close to the quality I became accustomed to at a very early age. Given the choice between "real" jelly and that mediocre sugar-laden purple pap that is marketed as jelly, well, I'd rather just put honey on my toast or not eat toast at all. I *will not* eat Smuckers -- Blech!!!! (Yes, I'll admit it -- I'm a jelly snob.)

When I moved into the city many years ago, I often missed the mulberry tree and always meant to get one to plant in my yard. Then, a few years back, one just sort of materialized in our fence row... and another sprouted up in the middle of the yard. Yeah chaotic bird poop! Go, go random droppings!!

Anyway...

The mulberries are ripe, so last night we stood under the tree as the sun was setting and ate all of the dark ones that were within our reach. My Hubby realized that he could hold the Toddler up above his shoulders, thus making it possible to harvest fruit even higher in the tree. Maybe at some point we'll designate a set of sheets (as my Hubby's family did) to be the "Mulberry Sheets" to be laid out under the tree while the branches are shaken causing the fruit to drop to the ground. Perhaps next year I might even try my hand at a batch of jelly... I *do* have my grandmother's recipe after all....

We had another poetic evening, there, under the mulberry tree. A HUGE crane flew overhead, momentarily eclipsing the rising moon like some prehistoric pale dragon silhouetted against the sky. A rabbit hopped past.... and a pair of quail tottered briefly out of the brush. Riding the golf cart back to the house, a deer shot past us, huge dog in hot pursuit, then galloped off across the field with the rest of its herd.

And of course, the mockingbird was singing, this time from the roof of the barn.

Luckily, mulberries don't actually stain quite as intensely as blueberries (which the Toddler also loves), so we were eventually able to clean most of the purple off of her hands. Though, really, I'm not sure if there was a point -- tomorrow there'll be another batch ripe and ready to pick. Maybe I'll just think of June as "the month we're all kind of purple."

Ahhh... Now my DNA can breathe a sign of relief, knowing that the mulberry gene has been passed along. I have done my duty to humanity.