My love affair with mulberries began when I was nine years old. I was spending a week at
The County School summer camp with my best friend, Alison. We were having a bit of a rough time: we didn't know any of the other kids there, and we were rarely put in the same activity groups. Every afternoon we were granted a few precious hours of free time, and Alison and I found a comfortable perch on the white painted gate where we could catch each other up on our respective activities. On one of those fateful days, we suddenly realized that the tree we were sitting beneath was laden with dark purple berries that looked like little blackberries. Not only did they look appetizing, they tasted even better! Thus began our progressive stripping the mulberry tree of all its berries, even the unripe ones, until its lower branches were completely bare of fruit. When our week of camp was over, we reminisced about our afternoons whiled away eating mulberries and talking, and I think the mulberry tree was the single element I missed the most in the subsequent years.
About three years later the mulberries struck again, this time during swim season. I was a hard-core summer swimmer (two-a-day practices,time trials, clinics, big pasta dinners....), and one day after morning practice a bunch of my teammates and I were roaming around the club for which we swam. All of a sudden, we felt something squishy under our feet, which were coated in pulpy, purple goo. I looked up, and my jaw fell open. It was a mulberry tree! So close to me this whole time and I hadn't known it! I soon recruited some of my friends into the mulberry fan club, and we invented a new sport, mulberry wars, in which we would pick handfuls of the plump, juicy berries and smear each other with the purple juice (the one who most closely resembled a lavender bush lost).
When I outgrew summer swim team, I assumed that my access to my beloved mulberries would be severely limited, if not cut off completely, as I now spent much less time at the pool. However, last week the mulberry gods smiled down on me again, as I discovered a fair number of large mulberry branches hanging over the fence from a tree in our neighbor's yard. I took it as a sign. Mulberries clearly wanted to be in my life. It was time I showed them the deference they deserve.
And thus, Here We Go 'Round The Mulberry Blog was born.
