Mulberries!

Michigan summers will always be linked with mulberries for me.  They usually show up around the 4th of July which makes them perfect for pies and other delicious desserts!

This year, our best bearing mulberry bush was cut back to almost nothing, and what was left was unreachable, even by ladder.  There is a bush that grows over the Dexter B2B trail, and the roots sit near the bank of Mill Creek which I think gives the bush the juiciest berries around.  I think the powers-that-be cut it back because it would stain the boardwalk something terrible, but it still was just tragic to me.  We've found other bushes around, but none that has such good berries.

This year, I went back to the courthouse in Howell, mostly because the bush is easy to access, and I know exactly where it is.  John likes to tell me where he's found a "good" bush in very vague terms ("it's on the back side of the hospital".....I mean, how am I ever supposed to find that?), but he won't pick any berries on his own, so we headed to Howell.



Hannah had never been mulberry picking, and I felt rather sad that it wasn't a more organic/natural experience, but when she had to scrape berries off the bottoms of her Birkenstocks, I figured she'd experienced some of the reality of mulberry picking ;-)

John asked me to make mulberry scones for a breakfast at work the next day which I did, and they John very foolishly decided to use most of our mulberries in a smoothie which meant we never got a pie out of this year's picking.  I look forward to next year when I will literally fly Glo home from wherever she is so that we can mulberry pick for a week.

  

I did end up making a no-bake cheesecake the following weekend, but with strawberries and blueberries since...you know....John had used the mulberries to make a smoothie....