Mulberry Street?

Bestselling author and spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle often reminds us that what we resist, persists. But when the object of resistance has the ability to stain anything it comes in contact with and jeopardize marital bliss, how can you do anything but resist it?

Each summer, in late June, my husband Greg and I brace ourselves for battle with our neighbor’s large mulberry tree that covers more of our yard than hers. If there is a substance with a greater staining power than a ripe black mulberry, I’ve yet to discover it. A mulberry, an attractive fruit in its natural state dangling gracefully from a tree, can stain anything, including and especially skin.

The madness begins with over-ripe, fallen berries squishing under our feet in the yard, staining our deck, sticking to our shoes and making their way into the house if ‘we’ are not careful. It’s the ‘he’ of our ‘we’ that is often guilty of this, which he tries to deny in spite of the incriminating splotchy purple trail. Then it gets worse. The birds that are so fond of our tree-filled yard eat the mulberries and for the next three weeks spatter our lawn furniture and windows with gritty, inky bird poo. As luck would have it, the staining power of the poo rivals that of the mulberries themselves.

In fits of fury, usually immediately following a mulberry incident – like when the poo falls on him directly or he slips in the berry-filled grass – Greg has been known to do a bit of pruning albeit surreptitiously, since the neighbor loves her pretty tree. And with the majority of the mess in our yard, what’s not for her to love? The pruning – a branch here, a branch there – consoles him temporarily but does little to solve the problem. Ultimately his fury subsides, because Greg’s deep love of trees outweighs his hatred for mulberry poo.

Next year, would be different we promised ourselves last summer, and the summer before that, and…. Tired of resisting those berries which persisted and at last inspired by the legendary forager Euell Gibbons, we decided that this summer we would make pie, not war with our mulberries. We started our mission with a small batch of preserves. The internet, usually rife with recipes for even the most obscure ingredient, had few recipes for mulberry jam, and even fewer that were made without pectin, which I considered to be a counterintuitive ingredient for our very local jam.

Two hours of picking and subsequently removing the tiny green stems from the inky berries yielded five cups of berries and two very purple hands. I scrubbed my hands and nails with the same intensity and futility as I had scrubbed the mulberry-splattered deck the previous summers. Is this really better than resisting? But as the jam thickened and the berries softened, gently simmering over a low flame, I too began to soften – how satisfying to be making my own jam from berries that would have otherwise gone to waste.

And then we tasted it. The jam was sweet with a subtle but refreshing tartness, and it was surprisingly delicious. It took ten years to muster the inspiration to cook with the persistent berries and ten seconds to regret having waited so long.

Now, mid-July, our peaceful mission has yielded eight cups of jam, one pie, a mulberry crisp (all from six quarts of berries) and, more importantly, an estimated 90% reduction in berries underfoot and mulberry poo. If you’re interested in making peace with a mulberry tree in your neighborhood, you can find my pectin-free mulberry jam recipe here.

By: Bobbi Marstellar