Coming Home – To The Orchard

My favourite characters on A Country Practice were Molly and Brendan and baby Chloe. They were the first people to publicly make a tree change although it wasn’t been called that in the 1980s. In fact, Molly was something of a curiosity and object of derision at the time. A woman from the city who thought she could work the land? Ridiculous! Brendan the male nurse was equally unusual, the family really represented the token ‘other’ in the story of white country Australia over forty years ago. When I went on exchange in 1988 I was intrigued to see A Country Practice dubbed into German. My host mother wouldn’t let me watch it, the drama didn’t fit in their acceptable cultural or religious mores. It shocked me to hear the show being deemed inappropriate. Like all Aussies we were fixed to the television at 7.30pm two nights every week to watch the show that reflected, well, us. Perhaps Molly is the reason I want to decorate my chookshed? She is certainly part of the reason I dreamed of growing my own food and I suspect she is behind the homemade chandelier hanging over my outdoor table. Ian and I binge watched the series in the early days of 2020 pandemic lockdown. I still love the stories and I still couldn’t watch past Molly’s death.

Perhaps it was Molly and Brendan. Maybe it was my Aunty Leigh and Uncle Gary. There’s definitely something genetic in the love of building a garden and renovating a home. My nan told us about how she repainted her kitchen every year, pink and grey were a favourite combination if I remember her story correctly. Mum and dad have built a few homes and renovated many more, always creating something better and lovelier than what was there when they stepped in. One of my sisters would give Molly Jones a run for her money on the land and the other would beat her in a head to head home remodelling competition. Actually, I’d like to see that! Me, I’m passionate about my garden and a visionary in the house. I just don’t like picking up the tools myself.

Our two cherry trees are incredible producers. In the season we walk down together after dinner and feast on the fruit. Cherry pit spitting competitions seem to have found an acceptable place in our backyard! We have added an apricot since we arrived and enjoyed very little fruit from it. It persists in blossoming early, before the last heavy frost each winter that burns off any possibility of fruit. In summer it fights the good fight of heat. Ah, the Australian weather, it’s a constant battle to stay one step ahead of it.. I’ve learned how to prune stone fruit trees into a bowl shape and olives so that a bird can fly between the branches and Ian masters the spray required to hold the curly leaf at some sort of standstill. In the first few years I was able to keep up with the produce and jars of olives and preserved fruit filled our freezer and pantry. I baked fruit crumbles and made lemon curd and lime juice and the most delicious zucchini in vinegar. Oh, yum, I have an urge to start planting!

And then I went to work full time. It was driven by a professional need to spread my wings and learn a new skill and I don’t regret that change for a second. It required me to travel each week and I was out of the house from breakfast and back, exhausted, in time to cobble something together for the family.

Since then the garden has suffered from the same malaise as the house itself. When I get time I go to my desk. If I have no energy I fall in front of the television. I put my feet up and read. In the heat of the day, if I am home, I hide from the sun that is the enemy of my fair skin. Our inability and perhaps unwillingness to work on it in every spare minute is beginning to show in the weeds and fallen fruit and unpruned branches.

It made me wonder… what’s a ‘spare minute’? Frances and Ed were both writing full-time as they restored Bramasole. I don’t think they waited for a spare minute to arise to allow them to do the yard work. I think they scheduled their effort and planned their tasks, their writing equally prioritised alongside the requirements of the renovation and the seasonal demands of their land. How do we define our time here at Ardley? Certainly not as effectively as they seemed to do. It’s like we are missing an important chromosome in our work ethic gene. The one that allows you to deprioritise the work you like doing to reprioritise the work you need to do. It’s quite the conundrum!

What I need to do  in the orchard are the following tasks:

• mend the netting covering the trees and protecting them from the cockatoos (the cherries are mine, I tell you!)
• spray the stone fruit for leaf curl – Done… but probably a bit late to really be effective this year.
• mulch the trees
• prune and stake the apples
• spray the plums for… not sure what but there’s something eating the fruit
• weed the aisles – started but will take all season!
• probably something else I haven’t thought of but will remember when I get down there…
• be ready to gorge on cherries by Christmas!

I am making it sound like a painful chore and I am realising I have allowed it take on that hue in my mind. It’s strange because in actual fact I adore being out in the garden. I’ve written before of how it is an act of hope and joy. When I get down there my hands start working and my mind starts roaming and time stops. It’s my dreaming time.

The orchard sings the seasons more clearly than anywhere else in my garden. Right now it is spring, the opening stanzas and tantalising chords of the song, a string quartet playing confidently and purely, ah, beautiful. Summer, the joyous chorus of plenty, loud and raucous and a romping major chord, the full orchestra and choir inviting all to join in. Autumn, the quieter, slower beat, an acapella choir singing a quieter, slow, nostalgic melody. And then the mournful winter, minor chord, a single voice heard only if you listen.