White mulberry tree

I’ve walked past this tree many times without knowing it what kind it was. I took this photo of it when I arrived, and found out when I left. Serendipitous photography?

White mulberry tree leaves are what they use in silkworm farming, because its leaves are silkworms’ favourite food. Silkworms aren’t worms, but moths.

Domestic silkworms are not the same as their wild cousins, having been horribly modified by humans for humans.

The silk caterpillars are fed white mulberry leaves. The caterpillars form cocoons made from silk and a gum to stick the silk strands together. When they’ve done this, humans boil them alive to remove the gum so the silk can be unravelled easily. The caterpillars die.

I first learned about this practice years and years ago from a book called The Rings of Saturn by a German bloke called W G Sebold. I’ve never been a big wearer of silk, but I decided never to buy anything made from silk again, and I haven’t.

Parkrun this morning went smoothly. Lovely Luna was mad keen on persuading me to give her all the treats.

We have a routine, where she gets a treat when we move from one spot to another and one when she sees her dad running away from her. She gets extra treats now and again, depending on how much she gazes at me with her big brown eyes.

Today, she made me run between positions, her ears flapping everywhere as she bounded along beside me, so she could have a treat sooner.

She stared at me and cocked her head. She nosed the bag with the treats in. She knows I’m a soft touch.

Back at home, I wiped off all the black goop that had appeared overnight in the oven as a result of my having coated the oven’s insides with oven cleaner yesterday, then rinsed it all as best I could.

I only did it because when Mr Pandammonium was walking the Pennine Way, I sprayed the oven with oven cleaner, but never got round to finishing the job, and I needed to use the oven. I haven’t needed to use the oven since then because anything that needs ovening goes in the air fryer or the combi-microwave – except for the cupcake baking tray, which I needed to use today.

I baked a batch of chocolate cupcakes from a recipe by Freya, a vegan former contestant on Bake Off; Mr Pandammonium helped by clearing up after me. While the cupcakes were in the now shinier oven, I made some chocolate fudge icing. I left the cakes and the icing to cool while I went to Cambridge.

I was in Cambridge for a writing group meeting, the last one until autumn. Afterwards, I walked back with another member of the group, and she told me about the tree.

She ate a berry off it, then suggested I try one. I had no idea which ones were ripe, so she found me one. It tasted tree-y.

She said there’s a black mulberry tree somewhere there as well. I should’ve asked her to show me it, if she had time.

Back at home, I iced the cupcakes while I cooked frozen chips and not-fish goujons in the air fryer, and peas in the microwave.

We taste-tested the cupcakes for dessert. Not bad.* We only had enough space in plastic boxes for eight cakes, which was perfect for our purposes, but meant we had two left over. What to do with them? ;)

*Americans: in British English, not bad is positive :)