Badboulder's Junipers

'Tis the season to break open a juniper berry for a whiff of gin.

What a aromatic treat for those of us who had never experienced junipers.

The Ozark mountain region (I wonder if the person declaring them mountains had ever traveled to the Rockies or beyond) is home to many deciduous as well as a more limited variety of conifer trees. The forests are spectacular. The evergreen in our area was the red cedar.

Cedars grew so prolifically at my childhood farm that they were considered a nuisance--cows didn't eat them. My mother actually paid my sister and me one penny for each red cedar seedlings we pulled up--we never earned much money at that endeavor nor did we contain the cedar population. Many farmers did bring in some extra income from cedar harvesting, hard work and dangerous. I don't remember ever seeing a juniper tree before moving west.

Yarnell historians tell us that this area was once populated by huge pine forests that were chopped down and used for the gold mining industry. I can only surmise that the juniper was of limited value to the miners as Yarnell boasts a few elderly Juniper specimens.

Badboulder's untamed landscape is home to three juniper trees, one a gnarled-trunked old beauty that still supports an ancient deer stand. The second is part of a dense growth where the cat-eating creatures lurk. The youngest juniper is ideally located for admiration--outside our bathroom window.

The bathroom juniper received a severe pruning last spring in an effort to create a wildfire break around the entire house. It has rewarded us with its fragrant, blue berries.

Anyone have a gin recipe?

FROM THE KNOTHOLE: Okay, everybody knows that gin gets its exotic flavor from the juniper tree. But did you know that the juniper berry has been used as a treatment for diabetes? Or, that it has been used as a female contraceptive? But above all, it is a beautiful tree. Especially the gnarled, ancient reverence of an old juniper. Old junipers exude power, authority, and timelessness similar to the eternal hope of the old rugged cross which could not extinguish the hope of the greatest life that ever lived. If you sit quietly and study an old juniper, you will understand that hope.

a parting shot from bbman: facebook now has more than 500 million users, which may help explain why unemployment is around 10 percent. jimmy kimmel