Autumn garden harvest. South Hobart, Tasmania.

Our rectangular, cake-shaped slice of home on one of South Hobart’s hills towards kunanyi used to be farm land and orchards, evident by the sheep shed sitting smack bag in the middle of our backyard surrounded by fruit trees, when we first moved in. It housed literally hundreds of friendly but rather large huntsman spiders and took up a large amount of unusable space, so all we kept was the cement base which we created a wooden platform around, then got onto adding to the rest of the back garden’s already orchard-like feel, with varieties of apple and pear trees, berries, and plums, as well as tamarillos, peach cots, figs, limes, lemons, olives, and a season inspired vege patch curtesy of Phaedon.

Yesterday we had the fresh green capsicums in a salad with barbecued tuna, and last weekend the apples in a pie. The pears and figs are so crunchy we eat them straight off the tree, which I used to do with the pears from our garden when I was growing up, where my mum and dad grew so much of the food that ended up on our table. Recreating 1970s Scandinavia in 2020s Tasmania with a big smile on my face.