When the crop was ripe and ready to harvest she started inspecting the peaches - every stocking had a ladder - the fruit flies had pierced the fine nylon mesh and laid their eggs.

Last April I joined a coach load of Canberrans on the Engineers Australia Heritage Week day trip.

We went over Scrivener Dam to the Cotter Pumping Station then to see the regeneration at Mt Stromlo after the firestorm in 2003.

New to me was the recently restored orchard. Via a geochemist friend and an astrophysicist, in December I found Amy Jarvis, heritage advisor at the ANU. She told me about the wife and daughter of Walter Duffield, founding director of the Mount Stromlo Observatory, who in 1927 first planted seeds and saplings in front of Observatory House on the exposed and rocky mountain top.

In 2004, Joan Duffield remembered, “… We all put our hands to the wheel and made an orchard on a small plot of vacant land… here were planted apples, pears, oranges, lemons, peaches, apricots, plums and nectarines, which all did well.” The orchard was harvested by following generations of observatory directors and their families.

In 2017, with funding from the Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics as well as an ACT Heritage grant, Canberra landscape architects HHL drew up a plan to restore the orchard. Neil Hobbs of HHL explained last week that the main orchard fruiting and flowering trees are now apricot ‘moorpark’, pomegranate, quince ‘smyrna’, snow pear and weeping silver pear, flowering cherry, as well as Japanese and Chinese crab apples.

Neil says he has found that apricots grow well in Canberra without too much care and he visits one on a local hill top that fruits well every second year. Gini Hole of Red Hill has just made her annual jars of apricot jam and chutney from a good crop.

From O’Connor, Dr Mark O’Connor reports that three years ago he arranged to legally import the ‘smokey’ cultivar of Amelanchier alnifolia, commercially sold as Saskatoon fruit. The fruit is reported to have a sweet, nutty almond flavour. Seed is difficult to sprout and out of 1000 seeds Mark managed to get a dozen plants to germinate in 2016.

In December one of Mark’s plants produced a bunch of berries. A few have been given to Canberra City Farm and others to Dr Jonathan Banks at his Pialligo orchard. Jonathan has been making jam from the chilliwack raspberries which he says have a more intense flavour than others.

In Batlow, Amanda and Ian McCorkindale of Cascades Nursery grow Amelanchier canadensis, the June berry, which is heat and cold tolerant, has bigger fruit than ‘smokey’ and bright red colours in autumn. Ian has eaten fruit from shrubs in his own garden and says they are not unlike a blueberry with a slightly tart edge and a hint of sweetness. The bird life likes them too.

If you are ready for a new taste, Ian sells 1.8 metre tall plants in 25 litre bags or young plants 200mm pots about 500mm tall. He comes to EPIC Farmers’ Markets every Saturday and sells a range of plants, including the June berry, from 7.30am to 11.30am.

On a 40C day last week my neighbour baked a cake at 6.30am. It was a chunky apple and marmalade cake from River Cottage Fruit by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall (2013 Bloomsbury Publishing) and the first ingredient was 3 tablespoons whisky. Quite a way to start the day.

Hugh says his wife likes to eat apricots in the bath and he enjoys the frenzy of hand to mouth peach eating. There are recipes for peach, watercress and redcurrant salad, peaches with red wine and black pepper and peaches and cream with meringue and pistachios.

However I’d like to share my peach chutney recipe which was made from 1982 to 2008 from trees in both of my Canberra gardens. It originated in The Home Orchard Cookery Book by Gilian Painter.

Ingredients

Put all ingredients in a pan, cover with vinegar and boil, stirring occasionally till well cooked and thick (takes approximately 75 minutes). Pour into warmed, sterilised jars and seal when cold. Makes four generous jars of chutney.