Around the Mulberry Bush

We may not have many apples this year, but we do have mulberries. Our white mulberry tree (morus alba) is our official bird watching tree for the month of June. If we sit on the back porch for twenty minutes, we count twenty species of birds feasting. Yesterday’s early morning bird count included cedar waxwing, red poll, cardinal, yellow finch, catbird, starling, bluebird, kingbird, English house sparrow, Baltimore oriole, and mourning dove. A few days ago I saw a flame in the tree — it was a scarlet tanager! And the tree grows in the flyway of the prehistoric blue herons, diving kingfishers, and the occasional osprey traveling between Old Frog Pond and Delaney Conservation area wetlands for fish.

The tree doesn’t require spraying, care, or attention – and every year its branches are filled with fruit.

White Mulberries

The seeds are scattered freely by the birds and once they take root, they grow. We have small mulberry trees popping up along the pond and even under the great canopy of the catalpa outside my studio.  This one doesn’t fruit, however; too much shade.

In the herbal apothecary, white mulberry is an important herb. The leaves, dried and made into a powder, are used to treat diabetes, as well as high cholesterol, high blood pressure, even the achiness from the common cold. The Chinese use the leaves, root bark, branches, and fruit as medicine and it is an official drug of the British Herbal Pharmacopoeia.

In America, the white mulberry is considered to be an invasive plant. The early colonists imported the tree when they tried to establish a silkworm industry.  Only the tree took root and spread its branches across the country. However, the red mulberry (morus rubra) is a native tree, but now quite rare in Massachusetts. American Indians used the red mulberry for food and medicine. Choctaw women made cloaks by spinning the threads from the fibrous bark of young mulberry shoots. I am always amazed at the abundant offerings of plants. Not only food and shelter, but clothing, nets, fencing, and art!

Willow Sculpture Rises from the Earth by Trevor Leat

We have two red mulberry trees growing on the farm. They were Arbor Day giveaway seedlings for the Town of Groton’s Arbor Day celebration a few years ago. We planted the small saplings in the open where they could grow to full size, but they have struggled with competition from field grasses. One was mowed down when someone didn’t recognize the small shoot among the weeds. Fortunately the trees are tenacious. This year, the unmowed one has fruit for the first time. The fruit is smaller than the white mulberry and ripens to deep red. It’s sweeter than white mulberries and would make a tastier and more colorful wine.

Red Mulberry

Small mammals also feed on mulberries, I often see a chipmunk munching along with the birds, but I’m told that fox, opossums, raccoons, skunks, and squirrels like them too.  And of course, why not the weasel?

All around the mulberry bush, the monkey chased the weasel,

The weasel thought 'twas all in fun, pop goes the weasel.

And just what does this popular ditty mean? It was a dance hall tune in mid 19th century England. I read that in cockney Pop refers to pawn and a weasel to a coat. It is about pawning your dress coat on Monday to get it back on Friday so you could be well dressed on Sunday. Sounds far-fetched to me. I also learned that in cloth making, the weasel was the machine that would wind yarn, and there was a pop sound every 1000 yards. This sounds more to the point especially given a later verse.

My mother taught me how to sew,

And how to thread the needle,

Every time my finger slips,

Pop! goes the weasel.

There’s something about that ‘pop’ that is appealing like the surprise of a Jack-in-the-Box toy. It’s a little scary because we never know when the pop will come, but we love the anticipation. 

Perhaps the song originally came from all the activity around a mulberry tree with ripe fruit; a children’s game of feasting birds and hungry animals leaping around the tree, chasing each other to get to the fruit.  And there does seem to be that ‘pop’ when the fruit is plucked off the tree. Sometimes I see a bird tug, the leaves and wings all a-flutter, and then ‘pop’ — off flies the bird with the fruit in its beak.

Mulberries are easy to grow and you can make pies, sorbets, ice cream, even smoothies with these small fruits that are loaded with antioxidants; even dry them for granola. The trees are most generous; they give and give.  I appreciate discovering some of the lesser-known fruits that can grow in Massachusetts. This spring I planted aronia and goji berries, goumi, and two kiwi vines.  It will take several years, but I look forward to tasting these fruits, and of course sharing it with the birds!

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Avoiding Apples

Last week I got an email from our local Harvard weekly newspaper asking about the crop this year.

Hi Linda,

I’m doing a piece this week on this year’s apple crop damage. Frank Carlson is estimating a crop that will be about 50 to 75 percent of an average year’s crop. Are you seeing that kind of damage to your crop? He said his Cortlands were hit the hardest, but Macs are also off. 

Are your raspberries ok?

Let me know, sad year for the orchards, especially those who grow peaches.

Thanks,

 Joan

Frank Carlson is the patriarch of the orchard world in Harvard. When I first decided to bring back our trees, I called him. I felt shy about disturbing the man who was running the largest orchard in town, but I needed to make a connection with someone who knew about apples. Frank told me to come by, but when I arrived, I wasn’t really sure why I was there. It was harvest time, and there were towers of wooden crates filled with freshly picked apples. Frank was a mini-cyclone, answering his pager, cell phone, and loudspeaker calls, but he still took the time to chat with me in between answering questions that came at him from all sides.

Nodding, he said, “I’m familiar with A & M Orchards.” I told him that its new name was Old Frog Pond Farm and that I wanted to grow organic apples. “A small operation that is organic might work,” he continued. I sensed a sympathetic familiarity among anyone growing apples. I appreciated Frank’s openness and drove away with a glimmer of hope.  This year is a different story.

 I wrote back to the Harvard Press reporter,

 Dear Joan,

Yes - a sad year!

Our apples are certainly down 50 percent. It is variety dependent. The late flowering ones are all right, but varieties that flowered early were killed off by the frost.

Raspberries are doing well and it seems like a bumper crop of blueberries.

We have a few peaches…enough for us to eat; but indeed a very sad year for peach growers.

I think climate change is wreaking havoc with our perennial fruit crops. They suffer from these wild temperature fluctuations early in the season when the buds and blossoms are so vulnerable.

Linda

Climate change is the biggest factor affecting all of us. Plants don’t evolve as quickly as climate change is happening. Some good news is that one approach to lowering the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is to store more carbon in the soil. The soil benefits, the plants benefit, and the earth becomes healthier. 

Much of the carbon originally came from the soil and was released into the atmosphere since the industrial revolution. We have agreed that we need to reduce the carbon in the atmosphere but where can it go? Water covers 70 percent of our planet and when carbon combines with water it forms carbonic acid raising the acidity of the water and killing off plant life. Soil can take back and store carbon if we change our approach to industrial agriculture and land use.

One of the most important practices is to cover every square foot of soil with plants. Erosion is a number one cause of the loss of carbon. The second practice is to avoid tilling the soiling or minimally till. Tilling exposes soil to the air and releases carbon. Plants do the opposite through photosynthesis. Even if our fruit trees aren’t producing peaches and apples, they are removing carbon from the atmosphere.

The French government recently put forward an initiative, 4p1000.org with the goal of mitigating climate change effects through agriculture. Already 28 countries have signed on including France, Mexico, Japan — no, not the United States. The benefit of carbon rich soils is that the plants become more resilient. When we eat the food produced by these healthier plants, human health also improves.

While this year we may not have a good apple crop, hopefully by continuing to support our trees and encouraging their growth, they will become stronger and be able to adjust better to the fluctuations in temperatures that are certainly going to be part of our lives for the next decades. Climate Change Boston has just released their projections for Boston that include 90 days of summer over 90 degrees, which is essentially all of summer.  

Still, it’s a sad year for fruit growers and the reason I have been avoiding writing about apples. The trees may be luscious with leaves, but there is really very little fruit. Truthfully, my estimate is far less than 50 percent, but I hate to say it.  It’s so disappointing, and then I think that maybe I did something wrong, or that I could have done something differently.

Frank Carlson said that people are already calling for peaches. Their annual peach festival attracts a large following every year. It won’t happen this year, but they will be celebrating their 80th anniversary this summer. When the fruit is not as plentiful, your orchards need your support even more. Even if our apples aren’t plentiful, we hope you will come for raspberry picking, vegetables, workshops, our Plein Air Poetry Walk, and Outdoor Sculpture exhibits. This year we  celebrate our 15th anniversary!

Art Prunings

There is a heap of apple prunings outside my studio door. The size of the pile might make you think that it contains all the pruned branches that came out of the orchard this winter, but it’s only a small portion. We burned a two-story tower in an intense bonfire a month ago. All that remained was a circle of charcoal. Would that it were so easy to release the debris and the clutter that accumulates year to year in our lives. As I spread these residues throughout the orchard, I imagine how it will help the soil: carbon, in the form of biochar. The no-longer-useful provides sustenance. What if our own life prunings supported our future growth? 

The tangled heap outside my studio door waits because I committed to use apple prunings to make sculpture. There is so much wood that comes off the trees every year; it astonishes me every time. I’ve tried before, a few times, making an 8-foot hanging apple ladder and a few smaller mobiles using branches, string, and bronze figures. They are good sculptures, but the branch is still a branch; I didn’t unfasten it from its normal function.

Apple Ladder (LH)

I have in mind something else for all these twigs, but what exactly I am not sure. My own life has become so connected to apples — their seasons and needs, how to grow healthier fruit, the intricacies of bud development — I want my art to also interrelate with the apple tree cycles.

When people ask me, “Are you an artist or an orchardist?” or “What is more important the orchard or your art?” I respond that it is being an artist, because that’s what informs everything I do in the orchard. And so it follows that if my life as an artist is inextricably connected to this orchard, I want to try to use the prunings as a medium. A painter uses paint to create a world of form and space, color and movement, light and dark. I wonder how and if I can do the same with these prunings?

It doesn’t hurt that I am committed to putting up an apple-themed exhibit next January in The Gallery at Villageworks in West Acton. The challenge is that the work has to hang on the walls and not extend out. And I can’t use the floor, because the space serves for movies, concerts, and performances.  So I am limited to a slightly bushy two dimensions.

My art is often following a knotted path that leads to something unknown. There is always a challenge, and moments (many) when I don’t think I can do it. I’m not actually sure I can use these prunings. They are delicate, wispy, all irregular with little side shoots, or long side shoots, buds, or tears in the bark. There are some stronger branches, too. We will see . . . but I have begun. I recognize this gnawing feeling as if the rope I am hanging onto is fraying and I have to do it before I fall.

There is that untenable, unknowable truth in all great art, the driving impetus of the artist that the viewer senses. The artist is trying to express something that is unknown, but very real. One of my favorite paintings is by Paul Gauguin and it is on view at the Museum of Fine art in Boston. 

Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going? Paul Gauguin

The entire cycle of human life is in this painting — old age, youth, middle age, the sacred, the animal, the mundane and the mystery. In the center is an androgynous figure reaching for an apple. Art that inspires me asks for a dialogue. It always leaves me with questions. Maybe that is one of its secrets; while art strives to express the unknown, it can only express a brief moment of truth. There are no definitive answers, only more questions. I’m hoping that working with the apple prunings will push me to explore in ways I haven’t done before as an artist and that working with this new challenge will be yet another gift of the orchard. 

Winter Tracks

A pack of hungry coyotes visited the orchard. I didn’t know until the next morning when I saw clumps of reddish brown scat — big and fat and filled with seeds and fur and rotten apples — a rich scat bursting with life. Deep holes dotted the rows. The coyotes had smelled the burrowed voles and dug to catch and eat them.  I could see their tracks. My neighbor, Ed, asked if I had heard the coyotes. He said they were yipping most of the night. I said regretfully, “No. When temperatures are in the single digits we sleep with the windows closed.”

When I saw Ed the next day he said that he had seen a lone coyote leaping and twirling among the trees. He imagined she was trying to impress his border collie, Sneakers, and invite him for a tryst. Ed brought Sneakers inside the house — there’s a difference between wild and domestic creatures.

A tracker told me that the way to tell the difference between dog and coyote prints is that the coyote’s are straight, economical, and efficient while the dog’s weave back and forth, wandering here and there, as if continuously distracted. Coyote tracks are more like the long lines of an artist who is confident about her drawing. She is determined to get it right. In fact, before making a brush painting, an artist will often gather mind and body into one great ball of concentration. The release is a very decisive yet spontaneous brushstroke. 

This brush painting by Nantenbo (1839-1925), a Japanese Zen teacher, is of his teaching stick.  Whack! The thick black line is in your face. When I first saw the painting I felt the sting of the stick across my back. Looking at the Nantenbo calligraphy now, I think of the coyotes. That’s how hungry one has to be for food — physical as well as spiritual. Like the coyote, one has to be willing to dig deep, to prowl the darkness of lonely nights; to dig and come up empty and not give up.

Then I wondered about the delicate tassels tied around the stick. Perhaps we need to hold this powerful stick of keen determination lightly. Like that lone coyote dancing among the trees, we need light-heartedness and joy along with disciplined work. The coyote finds balance, and so can we.

Handstand, bronze figure with found object, LH