Well, a couple of months back Jess and I were driving into town, admiring the elderberry bushes heavily laden with the tiny light-blue berries. Next time we were out together we threw a pair of kitchen shears and a couple of smallish boxes in the back of the Jeep. We drove along a back road and while nobody was looking hopped out and snipped off bunches of berries, stuffed them in our boxes, and drove nonchalantly on our way.

(Who knows, maybe there’s a federal law that prohibits people from harvesting the endangered wild elderberry. If there is, don’t tell anyone.)

Then we brought them home to de-branch them. Elderberries grow in flocks of up to (I’d guess) four hundred tiny berries, all on one drooping branch. You have to kind of roll them off with your fingers, and capture them in a bowl. Then Jessica washed them, boiled them, added honey and I don’t know what all, and—of course—canned them.

Now that flu season has struck, we decided deliberately not to inoculate ourselves against the H1N1 or any other seasonal flu. Our kids go to public schools every day and do their utmost to infect themselves with whatever hot new pathogens the other kids are handing out. And yet—nobody’s gotten sick.

We blame the elderberry syrup.

Jess gives us a tablespoon full or so every morning with our breakfast. It’s not my favorite (the honey makes it pretty sweet, and I’m not a big fan of sweet), but I gulp it down and move on to the entrée. Same with the kids-a-roo. Nobody’s been sick since school started. (Well, I guess Becca did stay home one day.) What else to blame? Except for the syrup we haven’t changed our diet, and we didn’t get shots.

I’m not saying that natural remedies are a cure-all. But something is working. Maybe it was the clandestine hijacking of innocent elderberries (which would have gone to waste if we hadn’t helped out; nobody else ever seemed to harvest any). Maybe it’s the placebo effect; but who cares, if it’s working?