Welcome to elderberries.com, a site about everything elderberry! This version of the site is new as of 2008, but I’ve had the domain since 2000, after inspiration struck during the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail in the form of the line, “Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelt of elderberries!” The name elderberries.com was a perfect fit: geeky Monty Python, but cheerful and fun too.
The site spent about 6 years as a personal blog, complete with baby stories, weight loss updates and work anecdotes. But somewhere around the third year, I discovered that the vast majority of my traffic came from people looking for info on elderberries, and while I’m sure the photos of my son covered in pureed sweet potatoes were fascinating, I doubt it was what they were looking for. So after some research, I added a page with some basic elderberry info and recipes, garnering quite a few comments and links from around the web, and also kindling my early interest in the fruit beyond its association with Monty Python.
Life took some unexpected turns in 2005, and the site came down for a time. But while I toyed with the idea of selling the domain (I even contacted the authors of the comic strip “The Elderberries” to see if they were interested), I ultimately couldn’t bring myself to sell it. With all I’d learned about them, I had a real fondness for elderberries, even though I’d still never actually even had one.
In 2007, the desire to write returned in force, and I decided to revive the site. But what to write about? Well, duh. Of all the people who’d found elderberries.com over the years, what were most of them looking for? Why not create a site about elderberries? And this time, it wouldn’t be a single page of elderberry info and recipes, but an entire site about nothing but elderberry, and everything associated it. What to do with them, how to find them, how to know which ones are good and which ones aren’t, how and when to plant them, ways to cook them, what they’re good for. And then there’s other interesting info, like the meanings of the elder tree in Celtic lore, and historical beliefs about the mystical powers of the elderberry, and references to elderberry in ancient texts? And then there’s references to elderberries in fictional works, like the elderberry wine that was used to poison those poor gentlemen in the 1944 play Arsenic and Old Lace, and Elton John’s song Elderberry Wine. And maybe some info on Elderberry Park in Anchorage, Alaska and the campground Elderberry Flats in Oregon. I could go on forever!
I began with an open source platform called Joomla, but unfortunately, while Joomla has a wide range of features, its technical support leaves a lot to be desired, and it’s simply not a great blogging option (even after purchasing and installing the MyBlog plugin, which broke on me several times). So after chasing my tail for months, I gave up, deleted the site and restarted again using Wordpress in January of 2008. What had taken me months in Joomla took two days in Wordpress. (Huzzah!) Then in February of 2008 I discovered Windows Live Writer, which blew me away with its ease in creating beautifully formatted photo posts.
I’m still shifting things around to work out the best site structure, but it’s coming together. Please feel free to comment anywhere on the site if there are areas that don’t seem to make sense, or don’t answer the questions you came with. My goal here is to create a site that builds excitement about elderberries, and to learn more myself about this all-too-often overlooked bush, its intriguing history and its wonderful healing fruit.
3 responses so far ↓
1 Joachim Reinhold // Apr 4, 2008 at 12:23 pm
Wandering through your pages for years you are still not forgotten. Worlds created may have changed, some gone - but the thoughts of your loyal community are still there, wishing you well. From the bottom of our hearts.
2 Ed Montenegro // Aug 3, 2008 at 10:21 pm
Just love Elderberries but I wanted the whole pie recipe, can you send it to me?
3 kate // Sep 6, 2008 at 12:53 pm
“Auntie Bessie, who had already been frightened, twice, by a clock-work mouse, whimpered at the sideboard and had some elderberry wine.”
–Dylan Thomas, A Child’s Christmas in Wales
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