Peachy

You know those family portraits where the kids look perfect, and just for that moment, everything is peachy? Well this is my peachy family portrait. This is the day I've been waiting for. The day I could go out to my own garden and pick a bowl of beautiful ripe juicy fruit. Especially the figs with their harrowed past, and the new kids on the block, the peaches.

I would never have bought a peach tree called Pixzee. Call me a snob, but newfangled plant names give me the shudders. I would only buy the lovely old-fashioned nana peach trees. But when I handed over my planting budget to Kaye at Grow from Here, I knew there would be some surprises, and I was braced for them. Now I have the cutest little Pixzee peach in the front border, and I can actually pluck sweet juicy peaches off it and eat them as I walk up the path to the house. That is exactly what I dreamed about when I told Kaye I wanted an orchard out front. Never mind about the terrain.

It's quite vertical out there, but it's loaded with all sorts of good things for your nibbling pleasure. But back to Pixzee.

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This is the first blossom, way back in early September.

It soon became clear this one was a real show off. Look at that show biz tutu.

Pixzee and the tutu nearly came to grief the day of the big hail storm. I was working at the kitchen table, and heard what sounded like a huge load of gravel being dumped on the roof. Then I saw white gravel hurling from the sky onto the garden. There was an awful split second when I had to decide between the peaches or the blueberries... in the sense that I could only dash out and cover up one of them. (I think there's a movie with a similar theme.) The peaches were more vulnerable, it was their first year in the garden, and I instinctively knew I could cover them with a pillow case in a few seconds and save them. So that's what I did. I slipped flannel pillow cases over them, which resulted in me getting a few bruises, but most of the peach blossoms were saved. (The blueberry flowers, on the other hand were shredded, and we've got a much smaller crop this year because of that... but perhaps they needed a wee rest this year anyway. I hope they'll forgive me.)

In October, we were blessed with heaps of peachlings. So many, in fact, that we had to pull a load of them off. There is no way a knee-high peach tree can support 50+ peaches. I read it's better to cull a few and give the rest a chance to mature.

Eighteen survived, and we've picked and eaten nine of them. There are a few little worm holes, but no major damage. I don't mind sharing with a few bugs.

I really wanted to make a dessert with this haul, and not fruit salad, so I made an experimental tart, involving a butter puff pastry casing, a filling of mascarpone mixed with a tiny bit of sugar, the merest dusting cinnamon and cardamom powder, and a few drops of orange blossom water. I've been on a Middle Eastern cooking bender recently, so that's what inspired the filling. Raw fruit cut up and arranged meticulously (not) on top. Baked at 200 for about half an hour.

I know, it looks like a quiche from the '80s. What to do?

But it really was the most delicate, delicious slip of a tart. Absolutely, totally Pixzee.