This month, I have something quite different from my usual meanderings. I was in the garden at "Kibbenjelok" checking up on the growth of a Mulberry tree, which was given as a present to Kees for his Seventieth Birthday. Always the optimists, we planted the gift with care, knowing in our hearts that perhaps we would never taste the fruit from these giant fruit trees that are so slow to mature. As I was pondering if and when I would next enjoy the sharp, sweet tang of that rich black fruit, pictures from the past flashed into my mind
Little girls of seven or eight years of age, could be seen scurrying to school, carefully carrying a chocolate box or a shoe box in gloved hands, school satchel bobbing on their backs. The lids of the boxes were punctured with holes, and I remembered that the instrument necessary to make the holes had to be a No8 knitting needle. I didn't see any boys with these mysterious boxes, more likely it was swapping their playing cards that was occupying their hands, pockets and thoughts. When I was one of these little girls, I never went into any business negotiations with my brother or any other male.
Every year we would search the attic or the garden shed to find if the silkworm moth had hatched. The craze usually lasted for approximately four years. Many a child was in deep trouble from their mother when, the interest having faded and the shoe box forgotten, she left the moth to her own devices and eggs were found all over Aunt Agatha's portrait stuffed into the back of the attic
The staple diets of these little black dots, [which we moved from leaf to leaf with the help of a hair paintbrush], were lettuce leaf, rose petals and mulberry tree leaves. I recollect a fallacy that was strongly believed, despite yearly proof of its inaccuracy, that if you fed silkworms with pink rose petals, their silk would change from a pale yellow shade to a lovely, rosy pink. There is no doubt, the most valued food for these odd pets, was the mulberry leaf, especially when they had grown into fat, white grubs as thick as our thumbs. Tragically, even in those earlier times, gardeners had become tired of the rich purple fruit that stained everything and had cut these wonderful trees down. I became very popular during silk worm feeding time, with my constant supply of juicy mulberry leaves. Every afternoon, after school during the season, I would pick handfuls from Kitty Henry's Mulberry tree, [I have written in an earlier article of Kitty and her marvellous garden] a proud, mammoth giant. The going rate was one week's supply of mulberry leaves for ten grubs.
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