My grandfather, born in a mountaintop village in modern day Turkey, planted fruit trees in his Delaware home. He planted peach trees, pear trees, apple and mulberry trees to ease his homesickness for the dripping nectars of his youth. When I was much younger, I’d always beg my mother for stories of her childhood. She’d tell me about her school plays, her tennis matches, the time she dug up a colony of slugs, but she never retold any of these stories more often than she retold the mulberry tree story.
Every June, the mulberry tree in the backyard of 403 Crest Road, Wilmington, Delaware, would drip with bleeding, deep purple ornaments of fruit. The mulberries attracted flocks of birds, who’d happily peck away amidst the branches of the tree, singing many pitched songs: the offbeat symphony of the mulberry tree. My mother liked to climb the branches and join in. The mulberry tree was the only tree in the garden with its own personal love song. My mom loved how the mulberries dropped to the earth’s surface and created a carpet of vibrant, sticky syrup. She loved the tree so much that she decided to preserve the mulberry syrup. With the help of her friends, she collected, crushed and jarred the fruit. Like her ancestors in the ancient mountains of Armenia, she was making kini, wine. She stored her mason jars away in a dark corner of the kitchen cupboard. Two months later, she opened the jars only to find a moldy mass collected on the top of her “wine.” As disheartening as this was, she never stopped loving her tree. The fruit never disappointed. Never mealy, always sweet and slightly crunchy, mulberries were the best treat of the summer. This all changed, however, one summer day, when my grandfather announced to my mother that termites had infested the tree. It needed to be cut down. My mother was stricken. Termites? How could this be? The tree seemed perfectly healthy! She silently said goodbye.
Years later, my grandfather told her that there were never termites in the tree; he cut it down because of the mess it made. My mother was angry. The “mess” was part of the mulberry’s charm, its own celebration of existence. She never understood why my grandfather would cut down a tree that he loved in his childhood.
When I was five years old my parents and I moved to a new house. In the backyard were two mulberry trees. However, the branches were barely reachable. Sometimes if we strained and stretched our bodies, we could grasp the sweet fruit, but that wasn’t very often. The stained ground below was simply a reminder of the delicious gems that we were denied by our own shortcomings in the height department. However, I do remember clipping off the leaves and bringing them to my friend every day one spring when I was about nine years old. She kept silk worms as pets, and silk worms being the picky eaters they are, only eat mulberry leaves.
A couple of weeks ago, my mom and I went on a bike ride along the river. About thirty minutes into the ride my mom, who was ahead of me, pointed towards a tree on her left and pulled over. I hopped off my bike and went to see why she was pointing to a tree. She handed me a pump, purple berry. No explanation necessary. We proceeded to stuff our faces with mulberries. It turned out that next to the tree, were two more mulberry trees. One tree bore the common purple fruit, while one bore pink fruit and the other white.
Mulberry season has just ended here in Massachusetts, but if you are lucky enough to find a tree bearing fruit in your neck of the woods, please indulge in this often overlooked summer delicacy!
Recipe:
Mulberry Juice
I don’t have exact measurements for this one, as I’ve actually never tried making it, but I thought I’d include it just the same because it sounds like an interesting experiment. Apparently my great grandmother would gather the mulberries in Delaware and make this beverage for the whole family.
-Boil a heap of mulberries and some sugar
-Cook the fruit down until it becomes a sticky sap
-Strain the syrup through mesh or cheesecloth
- Pour a bit of syrup into a glass, add water and ice
Enjoy!
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