Mulberries

- The answer to Sunday's challenge. And well done to Pauline and Jane who both knew the answer.

In several locations around Vilanova there are mulberry trees.

The fruit is only just ripening at the moment and this is what they look like when they are ripe...

They are deliciously sweet and packed with vitamin C, but are rarely grown commercially because the fruit is truly a soft fruit and invariably suffers from picking. You will get red stains on your hands, but it's well worth it.

I had no idea what the trees were when we first lived here. It wasn't until I came across them on the Camino, ten years ago, that I found out that they were edible and so tasty, when a Dutch friend explained all about them. My only experience of them was the childhood rhyme:

Here we go round the mulberry buzsh The mulberry bush, the mulberry bush Here we go round the mulberry bush So early in the morning

This is the way we wash our clothes

Wash our clothes, wash our clothes This is the way we wash our clothes So early Monday morning

This is the way we iron our clothes Iron our clothes, iron our clothes This is the way we iron ...

In Spanish a mulberry is called a Mora, and Morera in Catalan, which is also the name of many berries, which can be quite confusing.