Crows and Mulberries

Between the rain, coons, the opossum, crows, and other assorted critters; we don't have many mulberries left. I must confess to enjoying the visits from the crows.
Watching them come in to land on the tip, top, spindly branches of the tree, is an entertainment. The branches bend and waver under the weight of the large birds until you think the large birds will certainly fall. But those crows flutter and talk and they ride that branch while taking the fruits.

I want to share a little tale with you to explain my special affinity with the crow.

When I was very young my Dad brought home 3 baby crows for my two older siblings and I to raise. We fed them milk soaked bread first. We used toothpicks to get it in the gaping mouths. Then we added hamburger and slowly they ate mostly meat.
Then we started turning them loose. Two of them did quite well at learning to fly on their own. Mine, wouldn't you know, flew but didn't like it when he got to the top of the house. He squawked as only a crow can and I cried. My Dad got the ladder out; went up and rescued him. Well actually this only happened a couple of times. Dad finally refused to go get him. "He'll learn." And again as parents can be, Dad was right.

What great pets, if you can call them that. They hung around that whole year.
Those birds were smart,thinking, cons and to us clownish. They knew us* and would come down to talk and ride on our shoulders. Our 'babies" did steal too. They loved "shinies" so we knew where to look for toys and other little things that came up missing. They used the "rabbit hutch" home like a chicken going to roost every evening and as a storage facility. They also used the neighbor's clothesline as a perch. Not a great thing after they had been eating mulberries or other nicely colored fruits. Imagine the clean bright white sheets after visits from 3 large crows. It did cause a large problem, fight, with the neighbor.

We have a photo somewhere of my "baby" brother riding a "trike" with one of the crows riding the handlebars. Probably my lazy, spoiled, bird. (When I locate my copy, I will scan it in for your enjoyment.)

So now I watch the large, beautiful, black, birds and enjoy them. I really wish they would come in closer but country crows are not the same as city crows. They aren't as friendly with people in most instances-they don't have to be.

*Longer article on the study

More on Mulberries and A little on Sassafras

As I am having an ailment that may go on a while, I will post a short one here. I cannot stay focused on the other subject right now.

Many folks don't care for mulberry fruit. Many folks have complained through the years about the dropping of the fruits, seeds, on vehicles, laundry, and the tracking of the juicy juice on shoes. When I was growing up, one mulberry tree was great but that one didn't usually stay just one for long. They would show up in nearby yards or fence rows. These little trees grew to be fairly large trees and leave “messes”.
As you know we ate and eat them in my family. Now it turns out the mulberry tree this year is producing heavy pollenlink. (The link that still works is today's news. You can then search for the mulberry pollen article.) That pollen may be great for fruiting but not so good for allergy sufferers.

Then I find some articles of interest on the different kinds of mulberry trees. I was unaware of the “invasive”, alien, . One of the recommended replacement trees the sassafras reminded me of a discussion I had recently with the baby brother. He won't eat poke, nor does he like sassafras tea. I don't think he remembers eating poke or drinking sassafras tea when we were little but he does remember the “nasty” smells later in life when he would visit Mom and Dad. Doubt he even tried either one at that time.

Again, there were, and probably are, many who didn't want that “prolific” tree anywhere around their property. They used to say things like: “it takes over like a lilac”. I don't know but I know the tree was not “prolific” enough for some of us. Now you can buy small packets of sassafras root, sassafras oil, sassafras powder, sassafras tea bags or maybe just buy yourself a sassafras tree. Just Google sassafras and you will find places from which to purchase.

I still love sassafras tea. I can't really remember every thing about the tea making with my grandmother but I remember I loved the smell and I loved the taste. I thought it was truly “root beer”.
No fizz but same great taste and smell.

I guess to each their own.

(Well here is a coincidence for you. I have PBS Create on the tube and the host of the garden, Copia, just gave the visiting host of the Victory Garden some mulberries. Mulberries will not be found in stores because they have no shelf life.)

More on Mulberries and a Quick look at Their Food Values

Just thought I would write a quick post so I don't forget how. I note that in my older, statinized, stage; I have lost some short term memory.

When I check to see if the blog is getting any action, one thing stands out.
I must keep writing about mulberries. Right now a part of the world is getting to eat mulberries. So they are trying to find more about the fruit, berries.
Are they making a comeback in areas that are economically suffering? Partly so.
Is it because some of us are getting older and thinking back? Partly.
Is it because the seasons are different in different parts of the world? Partly.

Maybe I will take a little time to do a little more research on the prolific berry producer. I have some recipes that are old using mulberries to replace blackberries.
That makes sense.

I do know that mulberry trees can sprout up all over the place when you allow one tree in the area. Not all the neighbors are thrilled either. The berries can leave a nice mess. The birds and wild critters that eat the berries leave a nice mess. Farmers around here like clean pastures and fence lines. Mulberry trees here can be about as prolific as the cedar or even lilacs in the fence rows. I do often wonder why we don't try to cultivate the mulberry tree as an orchard tree. Or maybe the scientific community can figure out a way to control the rapid spread of the tree.
(I also wonder though why the fence rows are getting cleaned out again. Trees were planted in fence rows to prevent soil loss during the dust bowl days.)

Of course, like many things scientific, you may not want them messing with another part of nature. Their record is not always that great. Fertilizer and weed control run-off into water supplies anyone?

But that could be another blog post yet.

Getting back to mulberries, it would be interesting research to investigate their food value. After a quick search, I found many things from natural food sites as well as much from Japan and India. The leaves are used too for the silkworm.

Here is a short, quick, list of the nutrients in a sort-of order for high count.
The sites normally list them as eaten raw.
Vitamin C
Vitamin K
Iron
minerals besides iron;
Riboflavin, Potassium, Magnesium

There is even a little protein. (maybe that is from the "worms" with which my dad scared us.)

However remember most of the calories come from sugars.

So there you are: the mulberry is good for you unless you have to watch your sugars.

PS. Don't ask me why sometimes I get paragraphs where I don't want them when writing these posts but they appear.

Growing Up and Looking Back

You know when I start thinking about my happy childhood I wonder why it was so happy-partly because of the extended family all around. Never any doubt in my mind I belonged. After moving out of the neighborhood, I had no trouble with fitting-in. I think being so happy for those first years of my life made me comfortable with self for years. Later, I felt inferior for some reason but some of that was normal and some was the town where we moved. That town had quite a “class system”. ( Now I know it wasn't just that particular town.)

Sometimes I miss the “clan” so. Especially I miss my mother. She was my guidance counselor and wise about most everything. I called her from wherever I lived for advice and wisdom until just a while before she died. I still talk to her often but the answers don't come. I feel so lost at times.

And yet, as the mother of a friend said when her last parent died, “Now we are the old-folks.” Yuk.
So I guess I am wanting to go back again to the happiest carefree days of my life: to the days of smoky, belching trains running by the house, to the huge yard, to the dirt of the yard, to the fights with my little brother, to the chores I thought I hated, to the paper dolls, to the hand-me downs from my big sister, and even to the trouble-maker big brother.

I miss the little red platform rocker and the old records my mother let me play over and over. I miss the Saturday night baths in front of the only heat in the house. I miss the most wonderful teachers and school administrators. I miss the janitor that played with us kids and made us feel even more special.
I miss the chat piles, our pet crows we raised from babies, the plum tree in the back yard and yes I miss the mulberry tree. I miss the rabbits dad raised back of the house. I really miss eating them. My mother could fix them so-o-o good. I know some are bothered by the thought but they were not pets, never were.
They were meat on the table and a little money for the family. We were glad to get both.

Those days were the “good ol' days”. Yes, they were hard but they were fun at that innocent age. I never knew we were from the wrong side of the tracks until many years later in my life. No shame for where I grew up just wonderful memories.

I just hope my son and yours kids have wonderful, happy memories like I do. I am sure they will but they will be their memories. Memories of their generation and they will someday sit and think of their “good ol' days” too.

Thanks to my husband for the picture of the wren.

More on Mulberries and Worms

What a dirty trick. Or was it?

In doing further research on mulberries I found an interesting note. (see yahoo link below) It claimed that what my dad did with the cup of cold water was something done to keep kids from eating the fruit to be used for the household. Well, that wasn't this case. I don't remember my mother making mulberry jam or cobblers. But my dad could do some pretty interesting things in the name of humor or teaching lessons. (Like the time he "let" me try to ride our nanny goat.)
The note further claimed that those weren't really worms. They were left-over parts of the flower. There is a good picture of the female flower on the wikipedia site.
According to what I could find, worms that hang out specifically on mulberry trees are silkworms and that is only on the white mulberry tree. They eat the leaves.
There are other larvae that use the mulberry tree as a food source but not maybe not as we were led to believe.
The "worms" I remember were not brown and there was wriggling. So I still am not so certain.
What do you think-worms or not?

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulberry or http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090613223538AAIjTcN

Mulberries, Big Sisters, and Lessons Learned

Help! Something is wrong with my mulberries. No, not birds eating them all. Not this year anyway.

I went out today to gather some mulberries for a cobbler. I brought them in and promptly placed them in a bowl of cold water. I quickly called my sister to tell her my mulberries are broken...

Now why would I call long distance to tell her such a thing? Ah, a short story to tell.

When we were kids we ate green apples off a tree. We ate plums off a tree. And...we often reached up and took a few mulberries off a tree and ate them. Once when my dad was home, he drove a truck at that time so he was gone quite a bit and for long periods of time we kids had eaten some mulberries off the tree. We then went out into the open part of the yard to play. Dad went inside the house and came back out with a cup of water whereupon he called us over to the tree.

He said he wanted to show us something about mulberries. He pulled a few off the tree and dropped them into the cup of water and lowered it for us to see. I don't know about the others but what I saw was cool, as we used to say. These little green worms came boiling out of those mulberries. I mean lots of them. They looked an awful lot like the little green stems of the fruit. I thought that was fascinating. But we were discouraged somewhat from eating mulberries straight off the tree at least for a while. One of us apparently were more discouraged than others. That must have been around 58 years ago and yet there is more to this story. Just yesterday I learned something else about that lesson.

My older sister cannot bring herself to eat mulberries at all since that day. I was shocked when she told me. She is not usually one to be affected in that way. We discussed it further. I explained to her that if you just soak them you will get most of the worms out. Most of them. Nope, she knows it but she was having none of it. But,But...I explained to her that the berries would be cooked. Nope, doesn't matter she is just not going there. We discussed how many of the cereals and grains we eat are full of eggs of bugs and “millers” as I call them. She is not one to be overly sensitive by any means. She is not a cleanliness freak. Yes, she knows all these things but it doesn't matter she just can't eat mulberries since that day all those years ago.

All I can figure is she must have been in one of the many wonderful stages of childhood where you can have fears you never had before-like I did once about trains near our house. Those trains had been running near-by all along but one night that sound I had loved so, and do again, scared me. For some period of time I can't remember, I was afraid, only at night though. I can't remember all the childhood phases like this for kids but I know there are a lot. For instance the “fear of strangers” phase in babies. All of a sudden that baby that smiles at everyone and lets most anyone hold him/her will one day decide that that cousin or aunt or whomever, is a really strange monster to be feared. It is like someone flipped a switch. Then there is the fear of not breathing, especially at night. You must stay awake to be sure you breathe. Or the fear of starvation if you don't have access to food through the night, or maybe it is water so you don't die of thirst....

But my “big” sister?? Never. She was never a fearful person. She, the caretaker, afraid? The person who gave me her clothes? My protector? It CANNOT be. NO! What will happen to the world? Maybe someone else's big sister but never, no way, no how, not mine!

Yep. Big sisters, and maybe big brothers, can and do have fears. They may be tough. They may be the one who will stand up for you or punch someone for pickin' on you but shock of shock... Big Sister's have fears and they really can be “grossed out”, even if they don't let, sometimes daren't, let anybody know.

So the reason I called her...my mulberries had no worms.

Well, the mulberries were good, and the cobbler was good, and I am so very sorry for my big sister that she was in a “gross-out” phase when we got to see all those “Billions” of worms come out of those few berries in that cup of water. Lesson more than learned.

Happy Birthday Big Sister.

Spring Fever, Mark Twain, and Creativity

Years ago I read a line two, I thought it was a line or two, by Mark Twain. It was the perfect description of spring fever. I knew it was Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn but wasn't sure of the book.
I only remembered something about lying on a hill a beautiful sunny day while looking over the Mississippi River and wanting something but not knowing what it was you wanted. Well thank you Google, I found it without having to go through my Mark Twain books. It was wonderfully easy.

“...The frost was working out of the ground, and out of the air, too, and it was getting closer and closer onto barefoot time every day; and next it would be marble time, and next mumbletypeg, and next tops and hoops, and next kites, and then right away it would be summer and going in a-swimming. It just makes a boy homesick to look ahead like that and see how far off summer is. Yes, and it sets him to sighing and saddening around, and there's something the matter with him, he don't know what. But anyway, he gets out by himself and mopes and thinks; and mostly he hunts for a lonesome place high up on the hill in the edge of the woods, and sets there and looks away off on the big Mississippi down there a-reaching miles and miles around the points where the timber looks smoky and dim it's so far off and still, and everything's so solemn it seems like everybody you've loved is dead and gone, and you 'most wish you was dead and gone too, and done with it all.


Don't you know what that is? It's spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when you've got it, you want--oh, you don't quite know what it is you DO want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so! It seems to you that mainly what you want is to get away; get away from the same old tedious things you're so used to seeing and so tired of, and set something new. That is the idea; you want to go and be a wanderer; you want to go wandering far away to strange countries where everything is mysterious and wonderful and romantic. And if you can't do that, you'll put up with considerable less; you'll go anywhere you CAN go, just so as to get away, and be thankful of the chance, too. “(http://mark-twain.classic-literature.co.uk/tom-sawyer-detective/ )

In particular I love the line, “Yes, and it sets him to sighing and saddening around, and there's something the matter with him, he don't know what. ...”and this line, “And when you've got it, you want--oh, you don't quite know what it is you DO want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!

What a writer. I am always drawn in and always in awe of the style of Mark Twain. Even some of his darker writings are wonderful. How does one get such talent. I, being from the S.W. Corner of Missouri, was raised admiring Mr. Clemons as well as the art of Thomas Hart Benton. It can't all have been indoctrination because we studied other “great writers” and “great artists” from our state. Yet I don't always remember their names and when I do I am not overcome with the desire to write, draw, or paint as I am when the two aforementioned artists come to mind.

I note that many in my own family and others from “that neck of the woods” love to write sarcasm and wit. Many of us paint, draw, knit, crochet, and we invariably change any pattern followed or instruction learned as we quickly get bored with this type of guided work. Yes we are “hard-headed” but that is not all there is to it. We also use what I call “make do”. If you don't have what the recipe calls for make do with what you have. If you truly learn the science behind the ingredients, you should be able to come up with something.

I often puzzle over this phenomenon, this yen to be creative. Is it genetic or is it that generations were so proud of these great men. My parents both encouraged creativity in the arts, more my mother, but my dad too. They more than encouraged education and thinking. They didn't get to finish even the eighth grade so there was no argument in our home about education. But why the arts? I really don't know. I just know the arts were important too. Not just “readin', writin' and 'rithmetic”. Did people understand that education is and should be about encouraging a “whole mind” thought process and that one thing aids the other, similar to the way “whole language” is used for some kids while others are taught by “sounding it out” phonics. In reality don't most of us use “all of the above”?

Perhaps where I come from creativity had to do with necessity being the mother of invention. You can get pretty creative when you need to do so. And that type of creativity may well lead to an attitude, an admiration, of creativity in most of its forms.

Anyway the weather the last few days here has given me fits. It has been so wonderful for me that I accomplish little because: “you don't quite know what it is you DO want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!” I my case I want to do something, but I don't quite know what I want to do,but it fairly makes my heart ache. I stand at the window and look out at the wonders of our place and the world and feel frantic because I know these days can't last. So, I really haven't accomplished anything useful at all.

I know I will feel guilty soon. But I hope you can enjoy looking out your window as much as I do looking out ours and leave the guilt for another day and another time.

Poetry I Don't Get It

I have never been a serious poetry person. But since there are poets in the family, I figure I ought to try to “get” poetry again. So I reviewed some of what I learned years ago and found a little new about poetry on-line. What I found is: I am not a serious poetry person.

The only poetry for me is poetry that is straight-forward, painting, pastoral pictures.

Poetry does not need to rhyme for me. I do like the rhyme of poetry for children whether written by kids or for kids. I even like singsong poetry, supposedly not good poetry from my studies thus far.

I do not want to read all poems again and again, a little rereading for meaning is OK, but I am lazy. I don't want to figure out what the deep, psychological meaning is. Some play with words is fine-that is the why of poetry I think.

My definition of poetry is the shortest or best words, even if very unusual words, to describe a person, place, or thing. Thing in this case can be an emotion.

I know people and the “real” world are not always nice so I want be entertained or taken to a better place. I like my poetry like my old “fun” movies, escaping to a fun place or a mystery that will have an ending.

Then I thought maybe if I tried writing a verse maybe I would get it. Then my older brother and I were talking about food when he mentioned “beans and fried potatoes”. That combination of words are music and visuals of growing up . So here are the beginnings(and probably the end) of my poetry efforts but watch out... I want it to be read in a singsong manner.

If you want you can analyze the verses and let me know what you see and hear.

The Music That Is Me

Dirty face and well worn trikes
brown beans and fried potatoes.
Mosquito sprays and steaming trains
tailin' piles and sink holes.

"Do the job and do it right"
Swept porch and broom ed yard.
Summer leaches and washed cars
burnin' coal and drip lard.

"Play with me." "I'm gonna tell."
Steam rollers and road graders.
Drawing gate and ticking lock.
A Whine sack Baby Brother.

Hand me downs and Doris Day
mud pies and paper dolls.
Taking care and cleaning house
A-men-Able My Sister.

Be the best and run away
sickly sun and worry.
Trouble then and Mentor now
Thou Hector Older Brother.