The Mulberry Tree

There is a mulberry tree in my backyard. This is not so surprising because there are lots of mulberry trees in lots of peoples' yards, or at least there were before they were banned in Clark County because they produce a lot of pollen. (This makes me really ma because they are great trees that don't need a lot of water and produce a great deal of shade but hey, we wouldn't want people to have seasonal allergies, would we?) But the mulberry tree in my backyard is special, because it is a fruiting mulberry. Most of the mulberry trees in Las Vegas are the non-fruiting variety. But every spring this tree produces fat little deep purple berries.

If you have never tasted a mulberry, they don't taste like much, they are just a sweet, sweet berry that look a lot like a little blackberry. They don't keep well so I guess that's why you don't see them in the grocery store. I used to climb the tree and eat the berries until my face and hands were purple and my feet were stained from the berries on the ground. Our family dog, Velvet, loved them too, she would eat them off of the ground all day long. Bird love the mulberries too, although our cars don't like the birds after they have enjoyed the berries. Mulberries are tough to pick since they don't want to come off of the tree until they are very ripe, then they just fall and it can be hard to catch them. But as a desert rat I thought it was amazing that we had this fruit tree in our backyard.

The truly amazing thing is that nobody ever planted this tree. It sprouted up one day along the fence and my grandfather, who loved to garden, didn't have the heart to kill it. So he let it grow. There are no other fruiting mulberries in our neighborhood so we don't know how it even came to be. But it grew into a large tree. Much to my consternation as a child, the low branches of the tree were all on the neighbors side of the fence, and they were not as enthralled with the tree as I was, so they nearly always cut the limbs on their side back to the fence line.

The mulberry tree isn't doing so well. Many of it's limbs are dying back. Mulberry trees aren't supposed to live more than twenty-five years anyway according to one website, although the trees in my neighborhood didn't get the memo because they have all been around since the early sixties, which makes them over forty years old. But this winter I fussed and fretted over my mulberry tree because I was worried it wasn't going to come back. It came back, although we need to have it's dead branches cut back this fall. But I could see that it was an old tree. Then I noticed something. At the base of my old mulberry, a new mulberry tree was growing. The little tree that nobody planted was growing a new little tree to replace itself with. The new little tree has mulberries on it. Not many, just a few, but it is a sure sign that this new little tree is alive and thriving.

There is a moral to my story, at least there is for me. Don't give up. And when life gets difficult and you aren't sure you can make it, come at it from a different angle. Plant fresh roots. You will survive, even if it's not in the way you thought it would be. You will still blossom and bloom. And even when nobody thinks they wanted you, if you stick it out, people will come around to appreciate you for your amazing strength, unique beauty and triumph of spirit.



This is a picture of "The Mulberry Tree" by Van Gogh. It hangs in the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, California. It's considered one of his lesser works. He painted it in the fall of 1889 while he was committed to a mental facility in Saint-Remy. (I guess even he figured that cutting off your own ear is not a good sign, sanity wise.) The first time I saw it I stared at it for a long time. I could gaze at it forever. It's in a style called impasto, where the paint is so thick it looks three dimensional. It looks a bit like the work of a man in the nut house but that's what makes it so interesting. You can almost feel the emotions Van Gogh felt while he was painting it. It is my favorite painting. (My second favorite hangs at the Getty Museum and is of the Rouen Cathedral by Monet - yes, I'm a big fan of the impressionists.) I like the Van Gogh painting even more now that I have found great inspiration in my own mulberry tree. I hope you find your mulberry tree.