Mulberries
Every year in June, one of the trees in our yard starts shaking. If you look closely, you’ll see that it is full of squirrels and birds. You’ll see bluejays, goldfinches, rose breasted grosbeaks, and these fellows:
What they’re after are these:
They’re mulberries. We were very confused by all of this activity when we first moved here because they never look ripe. It turns out that they’re white mulberries. They are actually still white when they’re ripe. They taste pretty good if you can manage to fight your way into the mob.
Mulberries were planted in Lexington as part of a silk mania in the early 1800’s. The idea was that you plant some mulberry trees, order a bunch of silkworms which eat the leaves, and then you make a fortune selling the silk. I don’t think that anyone made a fortune, but there are still a lot of mulberry trees in town.
After the squirrels and birds are done attacking the tree, our yard looks something like this:
