A young woman, Daria Tomczak, shares a place with two flatmates in Narrabundah. They each have a car and juggle parking spots. One vehicle has to be parked in the street. In descriptive language and laughing, Daria explained to me that about 9pm bats descend on the mulberry street trees and squeal a lot. They eat the unripe fruit of the white mulberry and the cars are covered each morning in bat poo, leaves and fallen fruit. She said, "the mess under the trees looks like after a night party. The stuff on the car is very sticky and, if left too long, you have to use extra elbow grease to remove it."
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Last week I drove to a street in Deakin, planted decades ago with white mulberry trees. A local resident, Liz Johnson, was out walking her grand-dog Daisy. We examined the large, mature trees and fallen fruit beneath them and Daisy did some tasting. Liz said that on hot summer nights, she and her family like to soak in the outdoor spa and fruit bats darken the sky as they fly in for the evening feast nearby.
Dr Mark O'Connor sent me a link to an ABC story on October 26 which showed a well-watered mulberry tree and mudbrick house at Upper Brogo, NSW, surrounded by burnt forest from the summer bushfires. The tree was credited with saving the house. Mark grows a white and a red Shatoot, dwarf varieties of mulberry but the fruit are small and rather tasteless this year. His 10-year-old black mulberry is grafted onto a Hick's Fancy variety. It is netted to save the fruit from birds and possums and ripe mulberries are a couple of weeks' off. The white mulberry (morus alba) is the tree from China its leaves are fed to silkworms.The European black mulberry (morus nigra) is valued by humans for its dark purple/red fruit.
Liz and John Baker have a house in Griffith ACT but they own a heritage property between Boorowa and Cowra called "Old Graham" with a large country garden which they open to visitors every two years.
Liz emailed to add to the pectin story (Kitchen Garden, November 10). She makes Seville orange marmalade with Irish whiskey and a blood orange and lime marmalade. Her 1968 "bible", the British Good Housekeeping Cookbook, says to cut up the fruit and leave it in the water overnight to soften the peel to help release the pectin and soak the pips, in muslin, at the same time. When ready to add the sugar to the jam, squeeze out all the pectin jelly from the pips into the cooking liquid.
A few years ago she visited Fat Pig Farm in Tasmania, originally a fruit growing property now owned by Matthew Evans who served lunch and led a tour of the farm. Matthew said there were originally lots of gooseberry bushes and their fruit was used as a good source of pectin.
At Old Graham, Liz has a mulberry tree and when it is not raided by the birds she makes a mixed berry jam which is "very good". All it needs is a scone!
Now and then
In The Canberra Times' "Times Past" on November 4 a ginkgo tree was featured on the front page of the paper in 1966. An ear, nose and throat specialist from Berlin, Dr Joachim Volkner, "was awarded a coveted German medical prize for his research" covering ingredients in leaves of the tree which benefited blood circulation and relief from the common cold.
For many Canberrans, the ginkgo biloba trees in the courtyard at University House are favourites. In Trees and Shrubs in Canberra, 1991, 2001), L.D. Pryor and J.C.G. Banks say one of the trees, a female, was planted in 1955 and it fruited for the first time in 1986.
Following Canberra's devastating hail storm on January 20, University House has been closed. Heritage tiles on the roof were smashed and have to be replaced. At a Spring morning tea held at ANU Commons this month, ANU Deputy Vice- Chancellor Professor Grady Venville and Master of University House Professor Peter Kanowski, updated Members of University House on the recovery plan. It was a delightful, if poignant, gathering.
The scones were particularly scrumptious and Polly Prakash told me that the University House chefs did the cooking for events, catering and the Fellows Cafe at the Union Bar, where they have a kitchen onsite. The pop-up Fellows@Law Cafe at 5 Fellows Road opened on November 16 so I googled it and popped by. There is a courtyard with tables and chairs, barista coffee is Black Mountain grind, salads and sandwiches are interesting and, maybe soon, those scones will be available too.