Mrs Stolzenberg's Passionfruit

When I was a girl, about seven or eight years old, I lived in a small country town. We lived in a rented house and our yard had nothing much in it except grass that needed cutting and a woodpile of logs that needed chopping. My mother used the wood for the kitchen stove to make all our meals. My sister and I used the freshly mown grass to make mountains and castles and playhouses. I can still smell it.

Next door to us lived an old, old woman who had a wonderful garden. Mrs Stolzenberg had been a farmer and when her husband died, her son took over the farm and she moved into town. She wore the floral dresses and pinafores of the day as she worked in the house or garden. She even wore them when she chopped the logs for her cooking stove. She was a marvellous old woman.

Mrs Stolzenberg in her front garden

Her front yard was different from everyone else's. Other people had neatly cut lawns and flower beds. The house on the corner had a very modern rockery, but Mrs Stolzenberg's front yard had no grass at all. Instead, the whole front yard was full of garden beds with narrow dirt walkways between them. The garden beds had flowers – roses and petunias and zinnias and hydrangeas and dahlias – like other gardens. But they also had tomatoes and capsicum and lettuce and vegetables mixed in with flowers.

This was most unusual. Looking back, I see that Mrs Stolzenberg ran her garden for her own pleasure, not to please others.

Dahlias

Her back yard was just as productive as the front. She had some lawn under the clothes line, between the tank stand and the woodpile, but the rest of the yard was full of vegetables, right up to the big chook pen that ran along the back fence.

Her big vegetable patch changed throughout the year but there was always something growing there. In winter it was potatoes and carrots and onions. In summer the beans stood tall while the pumpkin and cucumber vines spread out and took over everything nearby.

Cucumber vine

Mrs Stolzenberg was kind to us and sometimes invited my sister and I to visit. She showed us the solemn brown photos of her ancestors that lined the living room walls and she had some cans filled with stones for children to roll noisily along her verandah. She let us play 'beam' with our tennis ball on the wooden arch over her front gate.

When summer came, we were delighted to see that the passionfruit vine that covered the wire of her chook pen sent out a branch along the fence that divided her back yard from ours. We watched as it flowered and the fruit set. There were seven green passionfruit hanging over our side of the fence!

Passionfruit vine

Now, you have to know that my sister and I liked passionfruit, though we had only eaten it a few times. We wondered whether we could have those passionfruit. We knew they belonged to Mrs Stolzenberg because they grew on her vine. But they grew over our side of the fence, so they were in our territory. Besides, we couldn't see how Mrs Stolzenberg was going to reach them, they hung so low down on our side.

So, we decided that when they were purple and ripe, we would pick them and eat them.

Every day we went to check their colour. Even though we knew that passionfruit stayed hard, we couldn't help but give them a little squeeze. And we put our noses close and smelled their fresh green goodness.

At last, tinges of purple began to appear. They would be ready any day now. Soon, we would cut them open and spoon out the yellow insides. Hmmmm....

Delicious juicy passionfruit

Then, one day we went to check them, but they had all gone. Every single one. There were NO passionfruit hanging on our side of the fence. Not one.

What had happened? Where had they gone? Had they fallen? Were they eaten by an animal or the birds? What kind of animal eats passionfruit?

We peered through the fence at the rest of the vine growing over the chook pen. It was loaded with passionfruit that were turning purple. What? It was only our passionfruit that had gone?

And then a thought began to creep into our minds. At first it was just a flicker of disbelief, but then it took hold. We faced the fact that Mrs Stolzenberg had taken them. She had picked them early to prevent us getting them.

We were nearly in tears. It was so unfair. We had waited so patiently. She was so nice to us.

Now we were hot with fury. What to do?

What to do?

Well, it seemed only right that Mrs Stolzenberg should share her passionfruit with us. And she should make up for her meanness.

So, the next day, when we saw that she wasn't in the yard, front or back, we slipped two loose palings up through the wire that held them and we crept through the gap in the fence beside the chook pen. We crept on fours behind the row of beans and we picked every purple passionfruit we could reach!

We loaded the passionfruit in our skirts and crawled back throught the gap in the fence, replaced the fence palings and feasted on passionfruit in the shade of our tank stand.

The girls who liked passionfruit too much

Then we felt guilty. Very guilty. We peered through the fence at the passionfruit vine, now naked except for the high ones around the gate to the chook pen. It was not good. We had done the wrong thing and we were going to be punished. 

We waited to see what would happen. Would Mrs Stolzenberg come and speak to our mother?

Days passed and nothing happened. We began to relax, and life carried on with one big difference. Now we knew a secret way into Mrs Stolzenberg's vegetable garden. We took the opportunity, now and then, to slip through the gap in the fence and munch on a few fresh beans, or a tomato or two.

After all, she was a nice old lady who was kind to us.