I can't put an exact time on this story, but it was when we were living in Western Australia. I was about seven years old when my family moved from Western Australia to Victoria. So, almost 60 years ago.

My grandmother lived in Shenton Park. In her backyard was, as I remember it, a huge mulberry tree. When the mulberries were pickable, I used to climb up into the tree and sit there, and eat as many as I could. Nothing beats a ripe mulberry. We have raspberries, blueberries, blackberries and more growing here. All lovely, but my memory of the flavour of mulberries always beats the fruit I can pick here.

When we moved to this farm I was excited to see there were four mulberry trees in amongst the wide range of fruit and nut trees someone else had planted. Two in the house orchard, and two in the laneway orchard running down to the river. We moved in in July, so it was six months before there was any likelihood of any mulberries to pick. But the six months went by, and the trees did their thing.

The two trees in the house orchard didn't go well. The leaves developed some sort of fungal rot, and rapidly defoliated. Shortly after that the juvenile fruit that was on the tree fell off, and there was nothing to ripen.

But in the laneway, the two mulberry trees flourished. They produced a lot of fruit, which slowly ripened from a vivid green to a bright red to a luscious black.

I was really excited to see some black mulberries finally, and tried them out, telling anyone who would listen my childhood story. They were dry, almost withered, and if slightly underipe a nasty sharp lemony flavour. The fully ripe ones had a hint of mulberry flavour, but were pretty much not worth the effort of picking. SO disappointing.

The same thing happened next year. This time I pruned the trees that were not coping, cutting off anything that showed signs of dieback or ill-health. Originally they had been biggish trees, but after a couple of years of annual pruning they were getting smaller. The pruning did nothing to provoke any new season fruiting.

Meanwhile, in the laneway, the two mulberry trees grew in leaps and bounds. One grew so vigorously that it outgrew itself, and over a short period broke off some large branches, losing almost 50% of its canopy in one year. And each year it produced a heavy crop. But each year the fruit was dry, sharp, lemony....just not nice. I would always try a mulberry when I could spot the dark black ones, and they were always a disappointment.

But this year....over summer we have had more than average rainfall, but its been in one or two massive dumps. The rest of the time its been very hot and dry. Maybe that's why the mulberry trees didn't develop their normal summer leaf/fungal problem.

Today I got to try a perfectly ripe mulberry. So ripe they burst when they were being picked. The juice from a mulberry is blood red, and stains your lips and hands. The first one was everything I remembered....incredibly vivid flavour, sharp and sweet. I stood under the tree and picked off the ripe ones. More than a dozen. The trees themselves aren't very prolific. There's maybe three punnets of fruit on each tree. That's not a lot....a same sized plum tree nearby had 30 kilos of fruit hanging there.

But I am not complaining!