Mulberries & Memories

I picked mulberries today at work to freeze and use to make mulberry muffins in Culinary Creations camp next week.  We're going to modify this recipe for Ginger Mulberry Muffins from A Spicy Perspective and read If You Give a Moose a Muffin by Laura Numeroff.


While I was picking the berries I was reminded of the last time I gathered a large amount of mulberries.  It was many summers ago when I was working as a naturalist intern at the Aullwood Audubon Center and Farm in Dayton, Ohio.  My friend and fellow intern, Angie, and I decided to pick mulberries from a tree that was heavily laden with them by the small pond on the farm.  We filled a large plastic container with berries in no time, took them back to the intern house, rinsed them and broke out the vanilla ice cream.  We had probably eaten half of our ice cream before we noticed the bugs.  Teeny, tiny, tan bugs crawling on the mulberries in our bowls of ice cream.  Neither one of us are very squeamish, but it did put us off the mulberries a bit and I didn't try them again for years.  It was still fun to harvest something from the wild though.  I have a lot of fond memories from that summer at Aullwood - I had the opportunity to work with great people and I made many wonderful friends, especially with my fellow interns, Angie, Erin and Pam!

I highly, highly recommend Aullwood and hope to make it back again soon.  Aullwood is a very special place!  It's where I first learned about birds and trees when I was in junior high and high school and what helped me decide to work in environmental education.  It's also where Kenneth I got married (three years ago this August!).

The next time I make it to Aullwood, I'll include our visit as a post here on the blog.  Just like Hocking Hills, Aullwood is only a short drive (about an hour and fifteen minutes from west Columbus) and is well worth the trip!