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nafex - [NAFEX] OT childhood/Orlando- Dried White Mulberries

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  • From: "Naomi Counides" <naomi@oznayim.us>
  • To: "'North American Fruit Explorers'" <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [NAFEX] OT childhood/Orlando- Dried White Mulberries
  • Date: Sun, 3 Oct 2010 11:44:17 -0600

Lucky, most of the Mulberries where I grew up in Louisville were the black ones.  I think my sister and I had every tree mapped in a 6 block radius with notes for accessibility of fruit, size, quality and abundance.  Grown ups, including our parents dismissed the trees as a messy nuisance.  Actually they were the major threat since they would have the trees cut down and removed..Actually gownups were the major threat to all fruit trees in the neighborhood.  There was a Grimes apple 3 blocks away that disappeared.  Sigh

 

Back to mulberries.  My parents never “got” that we really liked the fruit. So we ate it all raw.. not worth cooking. 

 

And there was a persimmon in our next door neighbor’s yard.  Another trash fruit that we got after.

 

I would read the Burpee seed catalog section on fruit trees longingly.  Eventually, I graduated to a better class of literature and got the catalog of the new York State Fruit Testing Cooperative.  I was a member for at least 10 years before I got a place where I could actually plant trees.  I made my very first order and still have some of the trees and grape vines 20 years later. 

 

We had a new place and a 2 year old son.  We went down the long driveway digging deep holes for our trees and moving Zak along hole to hole as we planted the trees.  Two year olds , or at least Zak, did not mind being in a hole and playing with dirt.  Now of course he claims it as a mental and emotional scar.. one of many I assure you.  By the time he was in first grade he had been given a gross anatomy lesson by a cooperative mobile butcher (at my suggestion), had attended a C-section at the vets, had seen normal calvings, kiddings, vaccinations, had eaten fruit and vegetables that he had seen and helped to grow, watched trains and had danced on potato bugs.

 

The scarred child is now a hard working nerd in Florida.  I will be visiting him October 22 to 27.  He is in the Orlando area if anyone has a tree or two to show me. 

Naomi

 

"Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment.  Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions."
 ..... Albert Einstein


From: nafex-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:nafex-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Louis Pittman
Sent: Sunday, October 03, 2010 10:47 AM
To: North American Fruit Explorers
Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Dried White Mulberries

 

Naomi,
My wife grew up in Elizabethtown KY, and had fond childhood memories of climbing a big old mulberry in the neighbor's yard and gorging on the berries, amidst flocks of birds.  She was the impetus behind us planting good fruiting mulberries, and I'm thankful she pushed me in that direction, as I'd had no real experience with them in my youth.
The old tree in the neighbor's yard was long gone by the time we returned from college & veterinary school, and in surveying the seedling trees around the neighborhood - mostly along the bank of the drainage ditch and vacant lots, all I could find were M.albas, with those bland, tasteless white fruits.

Lucky



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