Shipe Park Pleasantries

My front porch, covered in pots and buckets of various sizes, appears as a miniature Eden. My new red plastic adirondacks offer a quiet repose luring me away from homework and paper writing. Eleanor is now allowed out of doors and into the jungle that is our little parking lot. She gets lost in the beggar's lice weeds and the tall wild rye...cat treats will soon fail to bring her back.

But there across the street in quaint Shipe park is a little bubbling creek, well not quite bubbling, perhaps more like lowing, but a flow of water none the less. Along this creek bed grow dozens of spindly trees with leaves similar those found on grape vines. Beneath these palm size greens hide bundles of tiny berries...yet no one seems to know that they are edible. So they remain.



Until I found them. 4 or 5 pints later, my freezer and fridge are packed with fresh mulberries, ripened in the Texas sun. The ground is so slick with fallen mulberries my feet and sandals stain purple as if I were stomping grapes into wine. Cautiously tiptoeing to reach the higher branches, the sides of the creek slope ever so slightly downward and the berry sludge make things slippery.



At least a dozen more pints remain on the trees, almost ripe, too high to reach, or still barely green. I've weeks left to sneak back cupfuls of these native treasures...

Anyone for mulberry muffins, pancakes, syrup, bread, oatmeal, macarons?