(An apricot or peach)
After he
killed his children in a moment of frenzy, Heracles’ punishment was to
undertake twelve deeds. One if his last tasks, was to steal the golden apples
from the garden of the Hesperides. This was a kind of paradise that surrounded
the tree with the golden apples, (a wedding gift from Gaia to Zeus and Hera).
When you ate a golden apple you became immortal; so they were much sought after
and protected by seven nymphs, called the Hesperides. However Hera did not much
trust these beauties and reinforced the team with Ladon, the dragon with a hundred
heads. How Heracles managed to get the golden apples, you can read about in Apples from
Lesvos.
People now
wonder what these golden apples were exactly, because many kinds of fruit in
ancient times were called apples. More than once, tracing the history of a
fruit, I have been amused to read that the fruit was supposed to have hung in
the tree in the garden of the Hesperides. Oranges, apricots, quinces, pomegranates
and peaches, they are all candidates for the golden apple. Maybe this famous
tree was a magical one and bore all different kind of fruit.
Although
I wonder if it was apricots or peaches that hung in that tree, because
historians agree that these fruits originated in China, a country far from the
garden of the Hesperides and the Greek Gods. From Persia (from where the name
peach comes) Alexander the Great brought the fruit to Greece and later on the
Romans distributed it further into Europe. Of course, Alexander did not
personally bring the fruit to Greece. He died in 323 BC in Babylon, the mystical
city in today’s Iraq, after eleven years of conquering half of the world
without ever again seeing his homeland of Macedonia. His conquest of so many
countries enabled the mingling of many a Greek tradition with foreign ones and
I am sure that neither he nor his soldiers sat down to a Greek dinner, but were
served the dishes of the conquered countries. The returning soldiers of
Alexander’s army brought home the most strange things, like the seeds for
apricot and peach trees.
Peaches
are a little bigger than apricots, their flesh is white to light yellow; the flesh
of apricots is darker yellow or plain orange. Both have a peachy skin, opposed
to nectarines, which are peach-like with a smooth skin. These small differences
confuse me. In my garden there is an apricot tree producing large apricots, which
while ripening change in colour from light green to yellow, then to orange with
a fancy bright red blush. My neighbour also has an apricot tree, but hers produces
much smaller fruit. She also has another tree with fruit as large as mine, but
the flesh is light yellow, like that of a peach. And there’s another tree with
fruit that has orange flesh, which would appear to be apricot, although it
tastes more like a peach than like my apricots. Are you still following me?
Well, it looks like the apricot-peach-trees here in the neighbourhood each have
different fruit. My neighbour also has a tree with fruit, which seems to be a
mix of an apple and a pear. It is a very special fruit, also tasting a little
odd. I have a pear tree surrounded by only wild apple trees, will my
neighbours’ tree be a mix? You could easily believe that the Hesperides have again
taken up gardening and are creating crazy fruit, so that future historians will
be confused whether we have grown apricot or peach or apple or pear trees.
With
the prune trees it’s the same story. I have a tree with fruit, which ripens
into a dark blue colour and tastes soft and very juicy. My neighbour’s tree produces
dark red prunes, which is less juicy and soft. Cherries here also come in two
different tastes: the morellos (acid ones) and the sweet cherries, the last nearly
impossible to harvest because the birds are always faster than me. But we only
have one kind of mulberry: the white ones.
So
I don’t know what to call the marmalade I have made from the seven kilos of fruit
gathered from the various trees: is it an apricot or peach marmalade or should
I just call it a marmalade from golden apples?
Anyway
we are in the midst of the time of the golden fruit: prunes, cherries,
apricots, peaches and mulberries all are ripe at the same time. Because of the
wet weather in April, I neglected the strawberries a little resulting in a very
meagre harvest. When in May I recognized my failing I did my best to pamper
them and now they have rewarded me with a second harvest, meaning that whilst
picking the fruit from the trees, I also have to roam through the strawberry
fields to find the thick red and belated Summer Kings (a Dutch nickname for
strawberries).
It
is hard to get all the ripe fruit, just like it’s hard to catch all the
thieving butterflies, wasps and birds who are all feasting upon my fruit and only
satisfied after their bellies are well filled. No wonder we have those
incredibly huge wasps: they do not produce royal jelly, but apricot and prune
jelly (or is it only the bees who make royal jelly?)!
Each
year it’s a great joy to taste the first ripe fruit from the trees. Even after a
second and third day you are still being regaled with them. But when bowls have
to be replaced with buckets to collect them, you start to panic about where you
will find the time to collect and preserve. Now the harvest is nearly done, and
only a few boxes are waiting to be preserved, but I am sure that by next week
when I look up at the green but empty branches, I will again be longing for
that juicy fruit. Tell me, Hesperides, why can you not make all the fruit ripen
at different times?
(with
thanks to Mary Staples)
©
Smitaki 2013
