Shake The Sugar Tree!

I had a familiar song going through my head this afternoon:

"Here we go 'round the mulberry bush,

The mulberry bush, the mulberry bush.

Here we go 'round the mulberry bush,

So early in the morning.

This is the way we wash our clothes,

Wash our clothes, wash our clothes.

This is the way we wash our clothes,

So early Monday morning."

And believe me after an impromptu Mulberry picking session, wash the clothes we did!

I stopped by my friends house to plant more bean seeds and harvest the last of the summers asparagus. I mentioned wanting to check on the Mulberry trees out back when he said "Oh yea I forgot, they started to ripen just the other day!" Hate to say it but berries wait for no one...

So I called the hubby and had him gather my "stuff" for picking, and pickin' clothes for the kids and I. I use the term pickin', but harvesting Mulberries can be as easy as shaking the tree to loosen the ripe fruit. We just added a drop cloth under the tree and gathered the fruit into buckets - Having perfectly unblemished fruit is NOT ones goal when making jam!

So here I sit, blue fingers and toes (I wore sandals!) and the kids in the tub. But the fresh warm jam that was drizzled over vanilla ice cream was well worth the mess!!!