Plum Crazy!!

Plum Crazy! That's what the husband called me when I lopped several branches off a couple of plum trees that were blocking the sunlight from a bed of cold weather blooms last January.

These trees were growing plumb (forgive me, I can't resist) in the middle of a bed of gerberas and nasturtiums, a vivid visual cocktail that was still in the getting-ready-to-hit-you stage. No flower lover could blame me, surely, for wanting to give them their due?? And after all, there were three other plum trees growing in a line nearby with branches reaching up high enough to threaten to bring down all our electric wiring.

As for the fruit, well, here's when things begin to get sour. The plum trees are quite lovely to see. Hands up all those who remember 'Lemon Tree' playing on the radio when you were young. You get it?
When we'd just moved to Assam and to this garden, I'd spent many happy hours photographing the trees with new foliage, then later on with blooms and finally, laden with jewels of fruit.

 The blossoms, above, against the blue cold weather sky

 Harvest! Plum heart with peach border

There were enough fruit to set me off on a frenzy of jelly making. We couldn't eat them just as they were. Our local expert made us a bottle of pickle with a new and unusual flavour, and a bottle of syrup as well. The jelly was much more tart than we'd expected it to be in spite of the amounts of sugar and the number of sweet Assam lemons we'd used up in it.
Whenever I'd made plum jelly in Moraghat in the Dooars, the fruit flavour would begin to 'awaken' after about a month or so and it kept getting better and better over time.  So I took some bottles to family in Delhi - only to find they'd left them in their fridges, months later, almost untouched. The jelly just seemed to be getting more and more sour over time, they said.

My husband didn't exactly say  I was unleashing my anger on the trees when I axed them, but the words seemed to hang in the air alright.

I reminded him of our Moraghat plum tree and how, after one of the April storms that we call 'Kaal Baisakhi' had attacked it we got fruits that were large and juicy. He went away mumbling about forces of nature and madness being two different things.

July is almost here, and the fruit's coming in now. The trees that were left untouched yield plenty of plums everyday- small, hard and sour, but I'm not buying sacks of sugar again! The trees that I, shall I say, treated, have fewer fruit: naturally, because they have fewer branches. But quantity is just not the same as quality.

See the picture!! Guess which ones came off which trees!

Joy in the Morning!

Bittersweet

Bittersweet the taste of cold weather in the morning air, bittersweet the taste of these sweet limes, mussami, harvested yesterday.

 Mussami juice was something that figured on hospital diets when I was a child. For years my mother associated it with illness! Whenever Dr. Hingorani visited and prescribed juice, it meant mussami juice. There wasn't anything more fancy - packaged or unpackaged - available in those days. Those fruits weren't like the hybrids we get today; they were full of fibre and seeds, just as God made them.

It was a chore to extract juice from them. For some reason, wedding guests used to get them in traditional goody bags or Thamboolam. Those days, the mussami -saathukudi in Tamil - used to taste more bitter than sweet. Our eldest brother-in-law was the only person who really enjoyed drinking that juice.

 Now I find all my childhood tastes reversed. I've started liking home-made white unsalted butter. When we were children, home-made butter was such a punishment, while Amul Butter was so yellow and salty and so desirable!! Mohan and I are enjoying this bittersweet tough old juice from our home-grown mussamis much more than the smooth juice made from bought fruit. We're growing up? Or old?

 
  The gardener is ready to harvest the fruits of his labour. Bittersweet was the goodbye I said to the garden I loved for so many years, but how sweet it is to savour what someone planted many years ago in the garden I love today.  


Bittersweet, all these fire ants on the tree? I don't know and don't want to find out!

The Fruits of Labour!

These plums are the fruits of labour. Pick them, and you are committing yourself to some hard labour!

The plum tree in the compound didn't fruit at all last year because of the terrible drought. It was a loss - there was no plum jelly on the table.

This year the tree has put out its best. You'd hardly think this little guy was up to it, looking at the size and shape. It's in a dark corner of the garden, leaning on the garage wall.



The first time the tree fruited, we thought we could eat the plums as they were. They were small, but looked rich and luscious. One bite was enough to put us off. They werent just sour, they were bitter.

Those days the old Bawarchi (cook) Lakshman Singh Pradhan - but we never called him that; he liked the title Bawarchi - was alive. He was the last of the old-timers: a man who could cook several kinds of cuisine and could bake beautifully as well. I asked Bawarchi if we could make jam with the plums since they were so sour, and he said it wouldn't be possible.

Before I could argue, he said we could make jelly but not jam. I realised that he was a man of superior knowledge. He explained that he would stew the fruit whole, then strain the liquid into a cloth bag and collect the slow drippings. He would then take an equal weight of sugar, and boil it with the liquid till it reached setting point. So our first batch of plum jelly - not jam - was made by Bawarchi himself.


Boiling the fruit


In the bag. Govind is securing newspaper around it to keep the ever present 'poka'(insects) away.

In spite of the sweltering weather, we've been pickling and preserving fruits as if they're going out of fashion.


From left: Plum Jelly, Sweet Lime(Mausammi) Marmalade, Marwari Mango Pickle, Avakkai Mango Pickle.

Star Quality

These are starfruit, or kamrak, and like all the goodies of the season, they are golden and juicy. Around eight years ago, a boy came up to our bungalow gate on a bicycle and asked the gardener if he could meet 'Aunty'. He said he had many fruit saplings for sale. Mithhoo made him wait at the gate, and came to ask me if I'd like to take a look. We needed to plant some fruit trees in the compound, so I said I would. Like most salesmen, the boy talked too much and tried my patience. He did have some interesting saplings, including starfruit, chikoo, litchi and hibiscus. He swore they were excellent, all of them. He was quite dramatic, wanting to make a good first impression, and he ended each declaration with 'Aunty!' Mithoo wasn’t very pleased. Once the boy went away, he told me he thought that 'Aunty Wala' talked too much.

We referred to him as 'Aunty' after that. The sales talk turned out to have been justified. All the saplings took root, grew well, and produced what he'd promised they would. 'Aunty' came by to check their progress, and sold me chrysanthemums. We grew exotic hibiscus: yellow, mauve and orange. The chikoo and guava plants did well. The star of the lot was the kamrak.

The little thing grew quite well, and I ignored it, thinking it would be many years before it produced any fruit. It looked quite pretty as a young bush. Within two years of our planting it, we got fruits - and how! Every branch and bough seemed to hang with fruit. My friend Usha called it a 'teenage pregnancy' and asked me to take good care of the plant. The tree - actually hardly that yet - fruited twice a year after that first time. We had to add vertical supports to the boughs. You can see why, in the picture.

Every rainy season, the tree begins to look like a green cave. It is the best garden umbrella you could have. The area under it serves as a rest and recuperation outpost for weary indoor plants. And it's a good hideaway for anyone feeling a bit grumpy.

Mohan agreed to pose under the tree to give you an idea of its height.