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Authors: Kate Llewellyn
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planted for juice are not selling because of cheap imports. Fresh oranges now sell best, so navel orange trees are being planted instead.
To dig up a fully grown orange or lemon tree is horrible. Once, when we built something in our back garden in Adelaide, a great sprawling lemon tree had to be taken out. It was like killing an animal. My baby had lain in the pram beneath that tree, gurgling, looking up into the branches. The smell of the blossom was beautiful. And then we tore it up. I cried, but it had to go. A garden should have lemons so one day, years later, I rode home on my bike from university with a Lisbon lemon tree in the basket behind the seat. Its leaves were in my ears. It seemed to be singing to me. Its branches were around my waist. It felt like a lover. I put it behind the front gate and it grew about two metres a year. Great oval lemons came from that tree, yet you couldn’t exactly park a pram beneath it, as it stood between the side fence and the drive.
But we got lemons alright. Ever since, I have made it a habit to plant a tree when a lover leaves me. (And no, I don’t have a forest.) The lemon tree had been for that reason, and later I couldn’t remember his name. But he had big feet.
LEMON
Bitter breast
of the earth
I’ve picked this one
from a dark green laden tree
this is a cold hard
obdurate fruit
yet one swift act
releases the juice
enhancing oysters
fish and almost everything else
the acerbic aunt
of the orchard
beautiful in youth
yet growing thorny
in old age
irritating
irritable
when I move house
the first tree I plant
is a lemon
biblical
dour and versatile
I much prefer it
to those cloying salesgirls
the soft stone fruits.
L EMON S OUFFLÉ
This is an old recipe so it uses imperial measurements. I’ve not changed them to metric in case it spoils the soufflé.
4 eggs, separated
4 ounces of caster sugar
1 / 2 ounce of gelatine
2 lemons (when doubling the recipe, which is sensible to do, use only 3 not 4 lemons)
1 / 2 pint of cream
1 / 2 pint of warm water
Method:
Whip the egg yolks with sugar and lemon juice. Place over a pan of hot, not boiling water and make sure the water does not touch the bowl. Beat the mixture until thick, which takes about 10 minutes. Remove from heat and beat until cool.
Beat the egg whites until stiff. Whip the cream. Gently fold both these into the cooled yolk mixture.
Dissolve the gelatine in the warm water. Gently add this to the lemon mixture. Chill, covered with a plate or film of plastic.
Serve with whipped cream and strawberries spread on the top.
Wednesday, 17th May
Bulbuls. A pair of bulbuls have come to the water bowls. There are blue wrens too. They were here last year, went, and now have come again. Whether the grey Persian cat, Carmel, who visits the garden ate the wrens, or whether they come and go regularly, I do not know. One day I did find grey feathers on the lawn. Terry said, ‘If you feed birds in grass, they can get caught.’ So now I throw the bread and scraps into the centre of the lawn, so the cat can’t easily creep up.
The sea is grey today and I can’t tell where the sky begins and the sea ends. ‘Oh, what a beautiful day!’ a friend of mine, Franz Kempf, once said, flinging open a window on a grey day in London. ‘A silver florin of a day!’ I wasn’t there, but this artist’s friend told me, laughing, as it was such a shock to him, a dentist.
I have been out treading among the mint and nasturtiums, winding roses up above the side back fence onto the shed’s roof.
My fingers smell of nasturtiums. There’s a glass vase of them beside me, burning orange, lemon gold and rich brown. I used to think nasturtium seeds were capers. But although they were used for pickling during the World Wars and, even now, sometimes still are, it is the caper bush Capparis spinosa that gives the true caper. Caper bushes grow wild not only around the shores of the Mediterranean, but in Australia and the
To dig up a fully grown orange or lemon tree is horrible. Once, when we built something in our back garden in Adelaide, a great sprawling lemon tree had to be taken out. It was like killing an animal. My baby had lain in the pram beneath that tree, gurgling, looking up into the branches. The smell of the blossom was beautiful. And then we tore it up. I cried, but it had to go. A garden should have lemons so one day, years later, I rode home on my bike from university with a Lisbon lemon tree in the basket behind the seat. Its leaves were in my ears. It seemed to be singing to me. Its branches were around my waist. It felt like a lover. I put it behind the front gate and it grew about two metres a year. Great oval lemons came from that tree, yet you couldn’t exactly park a pram beneath it, as it stood between the side fence and the drive.
But we got lemons alright. Ever since, I have made it a habit to plant a tree when a lover leaves me. (And no, I don’t have a forest.) The lemon tree had been for that reason, and later I couldn’t remember his name. But he had big feet.
LEMON
Bitter breast
of the earth
I’ve picked this one
from a dark green laden tree
this is a cold hard
obdurate fruit
yet one swift act
releases the juice
enhancing oysters
fish and almost everything else
the acerbic aunt
of the orchard
beautiful in youth
yet growing thorny
in old age
irritating
irritable
when I move house
the first tree I plant
is a lemon
biblical
dour and versatile
I much prefer it
to those cloying salesgirls
the soft stone fruits.
L EMON S OUFFLÉ
This is an old recipe so it uses imperial measurements. I’ve not changed them to metric in case it spoils the soufflé.
4 eggs, separated
4 ounces of caster sugar
1 / 2 ounce of gelatine
2 lemons (when doubling the recipe, which is sensible to do, use only 3 not 4 lemons)
1 / 2 pint of cream
1 / 2 pint of warm water
Method:
Whip the egg yolks with sugar and lemon juice. Place over a pan of hot, not boiling water and make sure the water does not touch the bowl. Beat the mixture until thick, which takes about 10 minutes. Remove from heat and beat until cool.
Beat the egg whites until stiff. Whip the cream. Gently fold both these into the cooled yolk mixture.
Dissolve the gelatine in the warm water. Gently add this to the lemon mixture. Chill, covered with a plate or film of plastic.
Serve with whipped cream and strawberries spread on the top.
Wednesday, 17th May
Bulbuls. A pair of bulbuls have come to the water bowls. There are blue wrens too. They were here last year, went, and now have come again. Whether the grey Persian cat, Carmel, who visits the garden ate the wrens, or whether they come and go regularly, I do not know. One day I did find grey feathers on the lawn. Terry said, ‘If you feed birds in grass, they can get caught.’ So now I throw the bread and scraps into the centre of the lawn, so the cat can’t easily creep up.
The sea is grey today and I can’t tell where the sky begins and the sea ends. ‘Oh, what a beautiful day!’ a friend of mine, Franz Kempf, once said, flinging open a window on a grey day in London. ‘A silver florin of a day!’ I wasn’t there, but this artist’s friend told me, laughing, as it was such a shock to him, a dentist.
I have been out treading among the mint and nasturtiums, winding roses up above the side back fence onto the shed’s roof.
My fingers smell of nasturtiums. There’s a glass vase of them beside me, burning orange, lemon gold and rich brown. I used to think nasturtium seeds were capers. But although they were used for pickling during the World Wars and, even now, sometimes still are, it is the caper bush Capparis spinosa that gives the true caper. Caper bushes grow wild not only around the shores of the Mediterranean, but in Australia and the
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