I never knew just what

Mulberries

were, though I had read in school that they were the food of choice for silkworms, and of course, I’d recited

“Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush”

(though we sang it as “so early in the morning” and not “cold and frosty morning” as given in that Wiki entry above.)

My first introduction to mulberries was in the house of my friends Ravishankar and Usha, in Muscat, when she showed me some luscious berries on a large (almost-tree) bush, and I ate them, delighting in their taste.

So when I went to the Hindu Temple in St.Louis on Sunday, I realized that mulberries in their hundreds had fallen from the bush, and while waiting for the others (not being devout, I finish my pradakshiNam much faster!) I picked up several berries:

and after washing them, ate them happily. I had to wash them because the ground was also littered with dead Cicadas, and with the passage of many cars, was a kind of Cicada-Mulberry jam mishmash.

On the mulberry bush, I also noticed this lovely diaphanous web:

I wonder what kind of spider spun what looks to me like a social spider’s web….don’t know enough about American spiders!

End of random post :)