My Grandfather's Mulberry Tree

The first mulberry of the season is starting to ripen.

This tree is a clone of my grandfather's tree, a colossal fruiting giant of a tree which played a big part in all of my childhood memories of visiting my dad's parents on their smallholding in Boksburg. In the shade of the tree, planes flying overhead coming in to land at Jan Smuts International Airport ( now O.R Thambo International Airport) my siblings and cousins would spend our summer visits hunting down the biggest, darkest berries. The juice of mulberries usually stain, but this specific one does not, and tastes better anyway. We stayed well away from the vlekmoerbei that grew next to the chicken coop.

I remember getting staining mulberry juice on a multicolored dress, as was the fashion in the 1990's, and knowing I would get in trouble over it thought it a good idea to make a knot in my dress to hide the stain. My mom caught me out . " Hoekom lyk jou rok so? Het jy op hom gemors?" ( Why does your dress look like that? Did you make a mess on it?)
"Nee, ek dra dit nou so" ( no, this is how I'm wearing it now")
She untied the knot and told me to leave it down. It was a family gathering after all ( probably for my grandfather 's birthday come to think of it) and dresses no matter how stained, are better left un-knotted. It would have been a Sunday afternoon because I did not wear dresses willingly. You have to spend too much time making sure your bits are covered and can't do fun things like climbing trees and such. So it would have been a Sunday, after church service in the morning which required dresses to be worn.

My dad brought me a couple of cuttings of each of the fruit trees growing in my grandparents yard 3 years ago when my gran was ill. Only the mulberries, pomegranate and quince took. The pear, peach, plum and apricot didn't make it. They would not have done well anyway. They would need to have been grafted to grow well.

One day I want to make a fruit salad tree, grafting onto an almond all the other stone fruit. Also a citrus one....

My grandfather turned 90 yesterday. I called him to say happy birthday. He had tea and cake with his friends from the elders bible study. He gets lonely with my gran gone now for 3 years. He has a full time nurse taking care of him and still refuses to go to a nursing home. We live on the other side of the country so it's hard to go see him.

When I look at my mulberry tree I know that he sees his tree making fruit too.
I'll call him again next week to tell him when the fruit is ripe.

Now go call a grandparent or parent to tell them you love them.