Lately, I've been obsessed with growing frangipani trees. It runs in the family.
Every time we visited my grandfather at 35 Park Avenue my mother pinched another "cutting" from the tree. I'm amazed it grew any bigger. Alas, Mum's cuttings never grew because of the frosts.
I take or steal cuttings from all over Australia as a souvenir of my holidays in tropical sunny parts. It’s really an attempt to recapture my childhood memories of my Mum pinching bits at my Grandfather James's house and other memories that entails.
That piece of frangipani represents ice cream spiders made with homemade ice cream and Long and Barden's lemonade, which James lovingly served us at each visit. It reminds me of the Golden Rough that we bought with a sixpence Dad gave us so he could have a peaceful time with his father. It reminds me of coarse buffalo grass and the garden my Nanny used to tend. And it brings back memories of the piano and the crockery box that housed my grandparent’s photos. My brother and I would ram all the family photos into the piano keys.
These household treasures would bounce up and down as we "played music".
I'm looking at those photos now, not surprisingly a little worse for wear. Here's my Nanny proudly holding her first granddaughter -- me -- in front of a much smaller version of the frangipani tree sixty something years ago. Nanny's looking adoringly at me in a rather lairy printed Sunday best dress as we posed for photos in my long white christening gown. Sadly, as a 3 month old I'm not even looking at her or the tree with any sort of interest.
A while ago a friend emailed me a picture of the old home at 35 Park Avenue. Oh ..the frangipani has survived. I'm already checking if there are any bits hanging over the fence so I can grow a bit of that tree once and for all!
Above: The tree fully grown
Years later the tree seems to have been relocated to the side of the front yard as shown in the photos taken by Joan Lawrence below.
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