the Walnut Diary

Then there’s the little white mulberry in my garden.  It came up as a weed and I drove over it with the mower but somehow the blades missed.  It bent over and avoided them.  I backed up and tried again.  Again I missed.  So I forgot about it and went on cutting weeds around the garden.  The next year it had righted itself and shot up into a little tree, though the trunk bore the scars of incredible abuse.  I mowed around it.  The year after that it offered a few amazingly sweet mauve mulberries to bribe me not to cut it down.  O.K.  Each year it has grown, self-repaired its shape, and produced more of the finest mulberries I have ever tasted.  Now the garden is gone but the tree remains a source of shade and comfort.

Update:  July 24, 2018

The tree is still bearing away, but I hardly ever get a berry because of the tree’s overwhelming popularity with the local bird population.  At first there were just three cedar waxwings who could tell that these light mauve berries were sweeter than the tart-but- black fruit of the red mulberry trees around the garden.  Then one morning I flushed 13 goldfinches from the tree.  The robins caught on, and since then it has been an all-you-can-eat free-for-all.

I happened upon the tree at daylight this morning and savoured a dozen sweet, succulent fruit.  The early bird, and all that.