The mulberries cometh

Who ever coined the term 'as boring as bat shit' hasn't been to my house lately........ our backyard holds the biggest mulberry tree in the history of this planet. When Ed and I moved in last year we were charmed by it's magical faraway tree-like qualities. Its branches covered the back garden, lush green leaves waving in the late summer breeze. 'Oh and we'll get fruit to eat' we said, yummy mulberries. We can have silkworms!

Then the berries arrived, thousands upon thousands of them. Suddenly the mulberries were not so cute. They didn't taste as nice as I remembered as a kid, and after a week our backyard is unusable - the whole yard smells like rotting fruit and the washing line is now out of bounds for the next 8 weeks. Ed and I look like serial killers as our cream bathroom tiles are covered in purple and red smears, Chloe has purple paws and even Ivy has had a patch of the dreaded purple juice on her from time to time.

Everyday birds come from everywhere to feast on the berries and at night our place becomes some kind of fruit bat paradise as the bats gorge themselves on the berries. This is where the bat shit problem comes in. Bats eating too much fruit means bats pooing purple poos all over my cream coloured house, windows, skylights and whatever laundry I had managed to hang out of the way of the berries. Boring it is not let me tell you. I cannot wait for mulberry season to be over and I can only guess whoever coined the boring as batshit term also must have made up the saying 'sleep like a baby' - lies, all of it lies!