Couldn't give a fig

Sick, again. Al had tonsilitis last weekend and into the beginning of the week; I held on until Friday and am now wallowing in unspecified illness. How is it that no-one has splashed a red cross above our door?

I wandered out into the sun in the back garden yesterday afternoon, to indulge in a little morose drifting about. And there, in the far corner, next to the compost bins, on its small and sorely neglected tree, I came across the last remaining fig. It has escaped the birds, the kids, and the frosts, and was perfectly, sweetly, sexily ripe; purple and pink and pale, pale green; an unexpected gift hanging off the elegant bare branches. Normally, I share my finds with the girls, to encourage them to see the garden as a place of promise and deliciousness, but not when it comes to figs. No-one loves figs as much as I do, and these are my selfish delight, the one bit of garden produce I keep all for myself.

When I first moved down here, I lived in a small terrace house that backed onto a lane. (For the local readers: on Balfour St, the first terrace next to the Sporties hotel.) Two houses down, the yard was filled with massive fig trees, with branches that hung over the fence. When the fig season came I would wander down each morning, collect an armful of ripe fruit and then sit on my deck under the banksia rose and grape vines and gobble the goodies in the cool morning air. Even after we moved, I would sometimes take a walk past the fence at an appropriate time of year and renew my acquaintance with those generous trees.

Driving past the lane the other day, I noticed the trees have been heavily pruned so that there can be no more sharing with the neighbours. Even though the branches will no doubt grow back, and even though I hadn't visited for a couple of years, I felt that one of my special places had been irrevocably altered, and I was washed, inexplicably, in a subtle yearning for those lonely, confusing and fig-filled days.

I think today was the final blackberry session of the season. Last week, there was more than enough for all, even with a greedy labradoodle. Today, there were more pink and ungiving fruits than luscious black ones. Many looked delicious on the side that faced the sun but on the shadow side they were unripe. And the best picks have retreated beyond arms' reach, deep in the copses, available only to the birds.

I picked madly, but couldn't keep up with Nell's demands for more as she waddled behind me, mouth open and chirping like an insatiable baby bird. In the end she was most content on my hip, pointing out the particular berries she wanted. (I had a vision of the future and she was standing in an Italian market telling the stall holder 'Not that one, that one, that one at the back'.) Last year Lu was crazy for the fruit but this year she'll only accept the most perfect 'blackberry dazzlers' - the rest are licked, rejected as too furry/ spiky/ pink/ yuk and passed on to her sister. For Lu, the cemetary is now more delightful for the possibility of adventure to be found underneath the oak trees or through the head high grass.

The last blackberries and now a long wait over the year. But not so long as I thought - how is it that February has already passed and autumn visits us in th mornings now?

The pointy end

This morning I picked the blackberries that grow in the old convict cemetary just over the way. (It's worth living here, just to write that sentence.) When I stand there plucking the fruit from the thorns I have visions of brambles growing through the bones interred 150 years ago - it's not such a grim vision when you taste the sweetness while stopping in the sunshine.

I had thought to pick enough to make some jam but that was a plan doomed to failure. The whole process is so fiddly, the thorns so spikey, the labradoodle so greedy and sly (snuffling up the fruit from the basket while I was deep in the thicket), the kids so demanding (there's no explaining why these particular berries are destined for jam and not their bellies), that it would take me hours to gather enough. And, as much as I like blackberry jam, which is especially lovely eaten with cream on white bread, it's always going to be a distant second to eating the berries alone, outside in a field, glad of the sun that's warming up the first cold morning of the year. I'm not a peasant and I don't need to protect myself from scurvy and starvation in the long winter ahead so I'll gather and gobble them while I may and then enjoy the anticipation of next February.

And then I fell into the brambles. They really hurt. In an old book from my own and my mother's childhood, called At School with the Stanhopes (complete with boarding school, japes and sexually non-threatening but crush-worthy older brothers and teachers' husbands) there's a incident where they whole school takes off from conjugating French verbs and studying Georgian history to go blackberrying, so that they can learn the worthy art of jam making. The uppity girl is pushed into the brambles, which is presented as a bit of harmless fun. The way those thorns bite, more like serious assault, I think.

Protecting the environment, one forgotten scrap at a time

I am always struck, when reading any social history of fruit and veggies, by the decline of biodiversity in our food world. All those thousands of apple varieties, culled to a few dozen, the tomatoes lost to history, the potatoes never to be dug and eaten with butter and chives again. Where do they go? I understand the structures that lead to their loss: the corporatisation of the production and selling of food, transportation, subsidies and governance, and our expectation that food bills should be as small as possible, regardless of the larger costs. But where do the plants go when they're not wanted anymore?

I guess the orchards are bulldozed and the old backyard gardens paved over. But surely some hardy specimens remain in the cracks in the fence or down the back paddock, left to endure by chance or laziness or a lack of money to sub-divide. It's the dream of every gardener, isn't it, to stumble across a lost variety, just as those who love art hopes to find an old John Glover shoved in behind the beer fridge in a tumble down garage, and those who thrift believe one day they will discover a Clarice Clift teapot going for $2 at the Salvos down the road. Once plant hunters traveled the globe for the new, now we peer over back fences in search of the old.

Or at least, I do. There're things in my neighbourhood I don't see elsewhere, the remnants of gardens destroyed. Apple trees are dotted about the place and on the verges freesias and sparaxis grow in great drifts.


Many grow at the bottom of slopes, I suspect pushed down from the higher places by the landslips and deluges that wiped out the houses to which they once belonged. Some of these freesias I've not seen in the catalogues. They're not the sweet scented albas, and bear no resemblance to the large and bold varieties offered at 40 cents a bulb. Some have particularly caught my attention: mauve and gold, brushed in sepia tones, they are the flowers of a grandmother's wedding bouquet. Hardy and humble and not at all common (in all meanings of the word).

These plants bear a strange relationship to their environment: they're introduced and now naturalised; they're a product of suburbanization and now in threat from it as the council seeks ways to stablise the land for new sub-divisions, and 'cleans out' the growth in the name of neatness and hygiene. So I've started to collect some bulbs, scrambling down the slopes with Jasper the dog following enthusiastically (there could be a ball down there!).



I'm planting them in the garden as a token of things past, as an acknowledgment of what my environment contains within it now, and as protection against the loss of diversity and difference that will no doubt follow in the future.

I don't think this is helping the Amazonian rainforests or the loss of Australia's river systems. I'm not stopping a pulp mill (but then no one else is either). It's just a few flowers next to the road and in the traces of backyards. I doubt they're a lost flower, even though I can't place them, but even the commonplace becomes rare, as our agricultural past reminds us. Maybe one of my scraps will become The Flower That Saved Our World. Or maybe they'll stand as a reminder to the few who remember that there was a time when there was space for surprise and overgrowth and delight.



There are, of course, other very good reasons for keeping things just the way they are. You don't get this in 'townhouse alternative' living:

Life lessons

This morning, as we were walking down to the deli, Lu looked into the front yard of a perfectly restored 1850s terrace house in the highly sought after 'cafe precinct' of our town and said in horror and confusion, "Mummy, those people have no vegetable garden!".

It was the perfect opportunity to teach Lu about respect for difference, about the many alternative ways of living in our world but I prefer to hammer my points home hard. So I told her, in tragic tones, "Some poor people don't have gardens my love. Some people don't grow their own veggies. It is very sad".
"There are no chooks?"
"None at all".
"How can this be?"

Our kids are so very much their own selves, and they carry so much of us with them into their lives. It is best to be very careful what we give them.



(above: Lu, Al andNell in the harsh urban environment of the 'Paris end of Charles Street' - no really, people actually say that down here!)

*****

I came home from my walk today with a posy of freesias as big as my baby's head, with a scent as sweet and as rare as a kiss from Lu. In my other hand was a great verdant bunch of thistles for the chooks. All collected from the landslip areas and abandoned houses around me.

Those poor, poor people in their beautiful homes and elegant courtyards - they don't get their flowers for free.

Gather ye rosebuds ...

- or ye blackberries - while ye may. This morning, Lu and I strolled down to the convict cemetary to collect some berries for tonight's dessert but there were few to be had. Two weeks ago the brambles were laden with plump, shiny, multi-faceted nuggets but today most were small or withered and generally uninspiring. Once again I was sorry I didn't make the most of this pleasure while it sat just down the road and around the corner. When we were both about to leave Brisbane (for Canberra and Tas., respectively) , my friend Paul and I were thrilled at the prospect of brambles in our future gardens. They seemed both exotic and nostalgic. But now that I live among them I take them for granted. Saying to Lu, "There'll be no more blackberries this year", shocked me; I can be awfully offhand about things I once valued.

For the first time in a long time I wore a jumper as I drank my morning coffee on the back step. While we were out, Lu picked up an orange leaf to take home to her dad. The soft red of the autumn raspberries are brightening the patch by the back fence. These things don't mark a change in seasons but they do remind me that a change in seasons is coming and soon I'll look back on this summer with longing. Down among the brambles, in her jeans and a sweat shirt, Lu looked like a kid, not a baby. Seeing her there reminded me that when we don't go down the road to pick the berries, I'm not just missing out on fruit for a crumble - other, sweeter things will soon fade with the seasons.



Eating from the garden: tomatoes on toasted sandwiches for lunch; (planning) tomatoes slowly stewed with basil on pasta for dinner; apples - but no blackberries - in a crumble for dessert; raspberries and cherry tomatoes for snacks.

Free fruit

More blackberries again today, blue plums and greengages. Lu and I wandered, drifted, pottered and faffed about the tiny bush land – bush bit – up the road. With Lu, everything is slow. She takes her time and will not be hurried. This is good for me. I started the day with a spiky, frazzled energy as I dealt with work problems that had seeped into my leave. Misdirected monies and muddled timetables created overdone eggs, lukewarm coffee and a very resentful me. But after two hours above the traffic noise, helping ourselves to free fruit and stocking up on greens for the chooks, work skulked back into the darker, less visited corners of my mind, where it belongs.

Co(r)pses

Today we picked blackberries in the convict cemetery down the road from us. This is not the romantic place its name suggests. There are no markers or reminders of the people who lie here, no grottos, no ancient church. Just a small-ish field, dusty and dry, bounded by major roads, trucks and utes shuttling past. But the perimeters are hedged with massive blackberry copses, the slope looks out over a bit of forest and my ears catch on the invisible birds and not the revving from the freeway out of town. Lucy, Jasper and I spent an hour here, plucking and scoffing and saving a few choice berries for Dad, breaking the labour with, in one of Lu’s common phrases, “a sit down and chat”. So we talked about the finches nesting in the bushes – a good idea, so close to the berries – the trucks and the planes, and how some little girls don’t get to go blackberrying with their Mums, how some don’t even eat blackberries and how some only get them at the shop. We discussed how sad this was because if you don’t pick them yourself you can’t get the best ones, the biggest and sweetest ones. Lu agreed with all of this – yes, it was a shame that not everyone had personally selected berries and time with their mums – and I know that in 10 years time she’ll be mortified by my scavenging for food in public places. But for this little while it doesn’t get much better than sitting where the graves once were, sharing the sweetness. To quote Lu again, we were happy-heads.

Plus, dessert for the next few days is sorted: