Looking at my most recent plantings, and thinking of the things I've regretted not being able to grow, or secretly dreamed of growing, has started me wondering why fruit trees, more than any other plants, seem so deeply nostalgic.
Perhaps it's because the fruit trees of childhood were so much more than just a garden backdrop. There were the sensual and surprising joys of picking and tasting, straight from the tree, and that tantalising moment of not knowing, waiting for the taste to register, a delighting sweetness or a face-clenching fruit-spitting sourness.
And there was the gorgeous messiness of it - fingers stained with mulberry juice, or a tummy struggling with a feast of figs. And the endless experiments - crushing and mixing and stirring and imagining something magical happening, secret recipes and potions. Whether the fruit be forbidden or not - there was an exciting boldness, a hint of indulgence and excess, in picking, plucking, smelling, squeezing, tasting.
Fruit trees were plants you could do something with. And grown-ups played with them too!
Figs ... We never had a fig tree, but I have strong if indistinct memories of a fig in the backyard of an older relative, a great aunt and uncle probably. Fig trees seem to drip with that sense of an older world, both more earthy and more delicate than ours, where old people preside and people eat sweet, tacky homemade fig jam carefully spread on white-bread toast ... I remember the extraordinary profusion of fruit, as well as the wonderful tangle of its roots and deep crevasses of its trunk, a kind of naturally contrived cubbie house-cum-playground-cum-climbing frame ... And then there was the fig at the back of my friend Steve's rented house a few doors down the street from me in St Kilda, the momentous autumn I was about to become a mother (and Steve became the first friend to turn up at the hospital to welcome the newborn). I'm not sure anyone else even ate from it, but we'd hang out in the sun and I'd wander about the patch of backyard, helping myself, more than compensating for the leisurely beers a non-pregnant Steve could enjoy himself with.
Lemons ...
If there was one thing I secretly, irrationally wanted in any house I lived in, it was an 'established lemon tree'. My version of the 'close to schools' or 'potential to develop' that calls out to other prospective homebuyers and teases extra thousands of dollars from them ... We had one in Ashwood when I was growing up, a dense, dark green, prickly thing growing at the back corner of the house, sheltering the rubbish bins and the hose tap, making jobs as simple as watering the garden or putting out the rubbish surprisingly hazardous. But it bore beautiful lemons, a steady crop for much of the year ... my regular job, perhaps because I so clearly loved it, was to be sent by Mum to 'pick me a lemon'. That trip - especially round winter tea times - could be quite a scary one. I'd summon up all my bravery and determination to make my way along the narrow, cold, dark path beside the house, eventually finding a lemon as much by feel as by sight, before returning triumphant ... To this day, as my family frequently tell me rolling their eyes, there's nothing I don't consider improved by a squeeze of lemon. (And sorry, but a 'squeeze' means at least a half a lemon's worth.) ... Perhaps my efforts to grow some in Fryerstown will work. In the meantime, we have that 'established lemon tree' at our flat in Melbourne (pictured here). I've never seen a neighbour raid it, but I'm out there regularly, popping up the drive in pyjamas and dressing gown as often as not, and I sometimes amuse myself as I gather by calculating what percentage of our flat's cost I've redeemed in lemons over the past 16 years.
Lemons ...
Mulberries. These are long summers lived on bikes and in bathers down the Mornington Peninsula, and the four ancient mulberries growing on a vacant lot on St John's Wood Road Blairgowrie. Once discovered, brought home nervously the first time, and identified by Dad, these became a regular part of summer, riding down on the bike, clambering up those grand old branches balancing plastic icecream tubs, snacking constantly, and then dumping the spoils on Mum to turn into something for tea - though a bit of sugar and a scoop of icecream was usually enough ... When we spotted the famous mulberry tree growing beside the Red Hill Hotel in Chewton, it felt as if I'd been welcomed to a neck of the woods that had been waiting for me all along.
Quinces. The one thing that almost eluded my Dad in our suburban backyard in Ashwood, where he'd work carefully all spring, condemning Mum to a summer and autumn of jam-making and fruit-bottling that I'm not convinced she enjoyed! The staple, apart from the lemon tree, was a grafted plum, peach and apricot, though the peach never bore fruit. But Dad gradually grew more adventurous as the original beds against the back of the house were supplemented by beds around the boundary fence (almond, apple, nectarine ...) and the final challenge, an espaliered quince against the west-facing wall of the workshop Dad built behind the house for his tools and carpentry ... Even the word 'espalier' still conjures up a tantalising challenge, something sophisticated, beautiful and elusive, tenderly nurtured, caressed into shape ... The first quinces appeared, only a handful, none of the profligacy of the dear old apricot. And we kids became the latest in generations to be teased with a sliver of the nasty raw fruit, only to then watch it transform on the stove into something sweet and lovely.
Apricots. The taste of summer ... Eating, picking, stewing, bottling ... I could eat eight or nine in a sitting as a little girl, and still love a good apricot more than almost anything.
Pomegranates. We had a small one, ornamental only, in the courtyard side garden of the family home. I'm not sure why it fascinated me so much, but I'd spend endless time there, admiring the flowers, a weird mix of toughness and fragility, and one of the deepest colours, orange-verging-on-red, found anywhere in our garden. And then those weird, compelling, crown-tipped fruits. I remember examining them surreptitiously, breaking them open to work out how they could be a fruit ... But they also, to me, mean Spain, and travelling around Andalucia twenty years ago, immersed in the art, the architecture, the magnificent gardens. Then discovering the pomegranate's juice and seeds, and realising they are more than just decorative and symbolic.
Persimmons. Spain again. Not just any part of Spain, but the Alhambra in Granada, still the most beautiful manmade place I've ever seen. And there were those extraordinary trees I couldn't recognise, everywhere suspending their glowing orange globes on bare branches over crumbling stone walls and above rambling garden beds.
Crab apples. A childhood ritual, helping Mum make crab apple jelly. I must have helped pick the apples, but its the jelly-making I remember, using rubber bands to fasten the corners of a tea towel over the four splayed metal legs of an upturned woven cane stool, and leaving the cooked mush to drain through into a bowl overnight (wonder where those stools ended up? they'd be retro 60s treasures today!) ... But there's a sequel, much sharper, to this memory. I remember replicating it at my in-laws' Shepparton house, inducting my own little daughter into the ritual of crab apple jelly over a holiday weekend, together gathering the apples from the tree threatening to smother grandpa's shed, a tree that seemed so much fuller, more generous, more abundant than any I could remember.
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