Natures Gifts and some pie!

My new home and yard keeps amazing me. From the humming birds at my windows to the mulberry tree in the back! Can I just say how excited I am about the mulberry tree!? I had always heard of them in stories and such but never come across one in real life.

Look at how big this thing is! It's not the tree all the way to the right but the tree right before.



So to add to the list of yummy goodies growing naturally in my yard, is the mulberry tree! Here is a picture of the berries when I SHOULD HAVE started picking them.



But I didn't know what they were yet and I wasn't about to do something that would encourage my son to go picking possibly poisonous berries! Fast forward to present day...


Not as full of ripe beries but did anyone see the pretty little Cardinal on the right in the picture :)

Over the past 2 days I have been picking ones I could reach and I put out a sheet (crib to be exact)on the ground to catch them during the day. I figured it would never get used because I don't like cribs and don't own one (baby sleeps with mama as he should!).



Oh and can I add myself to the edible things in my yard? Because boy do the mosquito's eat me alive! I guess I'm just ripe for the biting lol! My grandmother always told me I must be sweet... Still need to figure some good mosquito control (if there is such a thing) so I am not hiding in the house half the summer...

Now I asked my hubby to bring over our new ladder so I could reach up higher(he bought it just in time to help me with this project!)and I got to work pickin' those berries! I had earlier come across a recipe for mulberry pie so it was my goal to get 3 cups like the recipe called for.








After trying to pick the berries by hand I realized I still could not reach enough so went into the house and got a big bed sheet and into the garage for a metal rake. I laid out this bigger sheet on the ground and climbed back up the ladder to try to shake some off this way. Well I wasn't doing a very good job at this (too afraid of falling and honestly of shaking bugs all over myself). There is a lot of bugs on this tree (makes sense as it's a very edible tree!) so I ended up asking my wonderful hubby to help me out.



How can the girl so in love with nature be so squeamish about bugs? Beats me! I actually lived in a tent for 2 and 1/2 months once so this whole can't handle bugs thing is really weird.

While my hubby was up on the ladder picking and shaking away my son was singing at the top of his lungs "Berry Pickin, Berry Pickin, Berry Berry Berry Pickin!" lol. I'm sure my neighbors "loved" it but it was so sweet and I wasn't going to hush him one bit! Besides one of the neighbors has some pretty noisy kids and it's not the cute kind of noisy... Anyhu! :)






Here is our harvest of sweetness.



Time to make the pie! Here is my son making pictures with his fingers in the flour :)



Pie crust



Mulberry filling



Finished pie! Now it doesn't look so good ( need to make more pie dough next time because this recipe didn't make enough for both halves) but the taste more then made up for it.



I can't believe how incredibly yummy this pie turned out! I don't know if it is because I made it or because of the mulberries (maybe a combination of both ;D)but it is one of the best pies I have ever had! And I can't believe this tree was in my backyard and I made this yumminess from something I didn't even plant!

We haven't been able to stay away from it. We actually had pie for breakfast! It's not like we do that all the time so it was a treat. The one bad thing? The pie is now gone! :( And I don't think I will be able to get another 3 cups from the tree again but I'm sure gonna try!