My Friend the Mulberry Tree

When I first moved to New Hampshire, to a new home built as a model for a new street there was an old tree in the front yard which I considered cutting down. 
I'm loathe to cut down any tree, which makes me a poor landscaper, but I respect things which have potential for longevity.

Van Gogh, The Mulberry Tree

This particular tree had, stuck in its lower limbs, a wooden barrel painted white which I asked the builder to remove but he referred me to his job foreman who told me the neighbors liked that barrel right where it was. Of course, there were only two other houses on the street and neither set of neighbors seemed to know the barrel was even there; that foreman knew the house was sold and made himself scarce never completing a single item on the list of final stipulations.

I climbed up and disassembled the barrel, no mean feat, and was left with the tree, which over the next 12 years shed branches and dared me to trim many others, which looked dried and unhealthy, but somehow bloomed each Spring.

It also sheds some sort of fruit, berries, which attracted one year a most stubborn skunk, who arrived around dusk and fed on the berries covering the ground. I flashed lights at this black and white marauder, banged pans, threw stuff but all that ever accomplished was the dousing of my dog with skunk perfume, a devilish stink to try to remove from a dog. I threatened the skunk with death by  bow and arrow, which made no impression whatsoever on the skunk, but horrified my good friend, a coyote aficionado and birder, who told me that skunk was only doing what any skunk would do when presented with a bounty of berries. For whatever reason, although the tree has every year shed bountiful berries all around its base, the skunk has not yet returned. 

Finally, this year, I googled the fruit and the leaves and discovered what I have growing in my front yard is a white mulberry tree. 

Mulberry trees can be male or female or both and some of the fruits can change from one "sex"--such as trees or flowers have sex--to the other. The berries on this tree clearly are both "male" and "female" side by side.

The tree is really too close to my front porch but it does shade a third of the lawn and under its branches the grass thrives, while the grass  beyond the reach of the branches, has burned to a crisp, exposed to full blazing sunlight most of the day.

This tree is host to squirrels, of course, but also to shifts of birds, a veritable bird hotel, with three large black birds, raucous as drunken sailors yesterday. You could only catch glimpses of them through the leaves. They might have been ravens, but more likely just big crows.  Some other song bird arrived today and it sounded like it had a bull horn. Never could see it, the leaves being too thick, but it just about rattled my windows with its voice. Through all this, sparrows, magpies, robins flitted around on the other floors of the tree, and it sounded like somebody had set up a roof top bar in the upper levels with lots of flapping wings. It's like having a disreputable hotel next door, with wild parties, loud scenes going on inside rooms you cannot see into but only hear through porous walls.  Today, a bouncer apparently threw a squirrel out of the joint: I saw him crash to the ground stagger to his feet, and scamper away. 

Red mulberries are native to New England but white mulberries are more Asian trees, where they are used to grow silkworms.

I have never seen a silk worm on this tree.

It had a hole in it, about six feet up the trunk which bleed some sappy fluid, but this sealed over about 2 years ago. Every spring, before it leafs up, I trim away branches which look dead to me, but what looks dead in a branch is not always telling: Some of the deadest looking branches beyond the reach of my trimmer tool have leafed up lushly now in summer. 

The first couple of years, I thought this an ugly tree, one of several ugly trees on my yard. I planted some river birches and I tended the paper birches planted along the lot line by the builder but the birches got borer beetle and have just about died out. They also bend over in heavy snows and they are beautiful but fragile and likely will have to be cut down and replaced with something more hardy. The Mulberry tree, however, shrugs off the ice and snow of New Hampshire winters and blooms again, fruits up in summer. It's earned my respect. 

Obadiah Youngblood White Mulberry 

To replace my failing birch trees, I'd consider Sycamores (London plain trees)  which I've admired in Central Park and elsewhere in New York City. These are beautiful, stately trees, with gorgeous, variegated bark and spreading limbs. 

But I think I'll let this Mulberry live out its life. We've come to tolerate each other, although I don't always like the crowd it attracts.

 Now, however, after 12 years, I sort of think of it as a friend.