Mulberries and a Giveaway!

The mulberries are ripe!! Oh boy, oh boy!! Although I had been anticipating their arrival, it still seems like they snuck up on me! One day, everything is green and the next day, they're deep, dark purple! I have 3 mulberry trees, and the one closest to the house ripened first. The first few pickings went pretty much straight into our bellies and on top of ice cream.

I set up an old mosquito net underneath the biggest mulberry tree in the garden area and this is what I found when I walked up there yesterday. With all the rains we have gotten this past Spring, the berries are the biggest and juiciest I have ever seen them! Nice and fat and many are over an inch in size! The branches are so low to the ground with all the weight of the berries. I filled up a bucket off this tree yesterday and then today I made and preserved 7 pints of mulberry jelly.

Youngest likes to tag along wherever I go in the garden and she was my little helper, happily helping to eat up all the berries. After she had her fill, she was squishing them between her fingers until I caught her and shooed her away.

This was from yesterday, and today I picked a little bit more than that. I'll be making another batch of mulberry jelly in the morning when it is still cool and I don't heat up the house with all the steam from the cooking pots.

I still have jelly left from last year so I'm going to do something I've not done before-- I'll give away a jar of my homemade mulberry jelly to a lucky reader that leaves a comment here. I would love to hear from you and that includes you lurkers! I'll draw a name at the end of the week and send the winner their very own jar! It's absolutely delicious and wonderful on toast and homemade bread. Good Luck!