It's that tree again. Sorry. "A symbol of prudence," declares Jane Grigson in her Fruit Book, "for not a leaf appears until all danger of frost is over." Too prudent altogether; this year, with its extra-late frosts, convinced this man that both his mulberries were dead or slowly fading away. And he hadn't realised when he put them down, in an area that is noted for late frosts, how every year was going to stretch his nerves. This was the worst so far. Even now, after something like 20 years, he has yet to garner more than little bitsy things, more pip than flesh.
So, wonder of wonders, a young friend, on holiday in the Midlands, reported by phone coming across a mulberry simply covered with lovely berries, big as loganberries, mostly fully ripe but with others coming along nicely through various shades of red to the real blue/purple shade. More, she brought back, with permission, a little plastic dish full of the fruit. It has a lovely, hard-to-describe flavour. One person said it was like blackberry with a hint of orange. Hugh Johnson, in his International Book of Trees puts it down as "searchingly sour and hauntingly sweet".
"They tend to be found," writes Grigson, "in castles, old manor houses or old vicarages," where in some cases you will find dustsheets spread below to catch the fruit - it is squashy to pick where it is within reach. Not always a tree of beauty. The bark is scruffy and in old age the tree tends to fall. But cheer up, it keeps on producing and even rooting from the branches as they lie on the ground - as may be seen in front of Breaffy House Hotel in Castlebar.
Just for the hell of it, buy a mulberry tree, maybe two. And to extend your patience, buy also a real quince, cydonia oblonga, or maybe a couple. There are many recipes for mulberries. Grigson says the best is just with cream or as part of the traditional summer pudding. Old Nicholas Culpeper, the famous astrologer-physician of the early 17th-century, informs us that the ripe mulberries "open the body, and the unripe bind it, especially when they are dried". And "the bark of the root kills the broad worms in the belly." And other messy hints. Y