As most people know, Nebraska is more or less rolling prarielands, with very very few trees.

The part of Nebraska we’re in has more terrain to it, and it also has some nice wooded areas. Particularly along the Platte and Missouri Rivers. We live about 5 miles north of the Platte, and I guess about 5 miles west of the Missouri, too. Cool.

Anyhoo, we are fortunate to have 3 very tall trees in our backyard. Most of the houses in our neighborhood have a couple tall trees, in fact. We have two honey locust trees on the right, in this picture. The leftmost tree is a white mulberry (I think).

From 2009 06 30 StupidMulberries

From 2009 06 30 StupidMulberries

We have had many issues with the two locust trees, most recently a night of thunderstorms had us waking up to this large branch dangling:

From 2009 07 04 LocustBranchWindDamage

Yesterday I trimmed the bottom of the branch, to get the leaves off the ground, and we’ll call our property manager to take care of the rest of it this week.

But this post is about what a pain in the rear the mulberry tree has been. We moved into this house on August 1st of last year. I guess we were at the tail end of the mulberry dropping season, there was a little bit of mess, but not a ton. When we got back from our vacation last weekend, our back patio was pock-marked in mulberry stains:

From 2009 06 30 StupidMulberries

We love our backyard. The kids have a cool swingset, they have a flat place to play soccer, Star Wars, fetch with Howie, etc. But lately it’s been a pain because they’re tracking in the mulberry ooze, bringing the deep purple juice all through the house, all over the carpets. Dave has been powerwashing our patio every couple days. Here’s the bottom of my running shoe:

From 2009 06 30 StupidMulberries

So now the kids have strict orders to remove their shoes the second they come inside. Usually not a difficult thing, but Saturday night Jacob ran in looking for one of his Nerf guns and didn’t remove his shoes first: a fresh mulberry on the bottom of his shoe left perfect little circular prints all over our family room, stairs and living room as Jacob was searching for his toy.

As for Howie, we have to make him sit as soon as he comes inside, and then take a wet paper towel to wipe his paws. I shampooed the carpets last week, which Howie really enjoyed — really, he seems to like the smell of the Rug Doctor shampoo.

There’s very little else we can do — we’ll just have to keep our grill covered, our patio furniture covered and tend to avoid that part of the backyard until mid-August. Boo.