I’ve tried, grown and composted many mulberries over the years. Some don’t bear many fruits, or set annoyingly small fruit. Others set great looking fruit, with little flavor and no acidity to balance the sweetness. Oscar is checking all the right boxes. It’s a hybrid of white mulberry (Morus alba) and our native red mulberry (M. rubra). Both the dark red and black-red fruit are delicious, with a little more acidity in the dark red fruit. Medium and light red fruit are unripe and pretty nasty-tasting. I read somewhere that green mulberries were hallucinogenic and a cure for boredom! Sounds to me like an invitation for a bellyache or worse.
I’m tempted to try rooting some of these Oscars, the fruits are that good (dark red or black red fruits).
Really, cicadas in California? I have heard about the ones in the midwest, but never experienced one in Ca in the 44 years I lived there. Are they a new invasive species?
No, not according to what I found in the link. I have heard them, and seen their corpses for quite a few years!
"Western US cicadas are annual, meaning they emerge in the late spring or early summer, continuing to buzz throughout the summer.
According to a UC Berkeley publication titled The Cicadas of California, only five of the 65 species in California are found in Sacramento County. One of these species, Okanagana arboraria, is endemic to the Sacramento valley and found in deciduous woodlands along the Sacramento River corridor, according to bugguide.net.
California generally lacks the widespread, lush, deciduous forests found east of the Rocky Mountains, where cicadas prefer to live. So, although California is far from cicada-free, they aren’t as prevalent as other parts of the country."
Not food but my 5 or so year old amaryllis just bloomed out of nowhere! By which I mean it’s been sitting on my deck for years with no attention, and just sent up a stalk and bloomed!
Rainycatcooks, if you like South Asian and Southeast Asian flavors, try some collard recipes that use grated coconut or coconut milk. The coconut checks the mineral taste of collards that is off-putting to some people.
Made me so happy last weekend to discover that a tiny successor of my SoCal tomato farm still survives in secret, ignored and uncared for behind the house, lol.
I picked a couple of handfuls of teeny tomatoes that are are intensely flavorful and sweet.
Little italian strawberries are coming into season at the base of one of the lemon trees (also mostly ignored, I think that’s the key… anything someone is focused on is not doing so well — poor karipatta and all the many citruses).
We harvested our first tomato of the season today: a momotaro. Unfortunately, in my haste to get it into a sandwich, I neglected to take a photo first. You’ll just have to take my word for it! It was delicious as only the summer’s first tomato can be.
— poor karipatta and all the many citruses).
