WHERE ONIONS AND SHALLOTS ARE THE SAME

 

The thing about being on an island with a small population is the closed camaraderie.

I heard a voice and parted the laundry on the clothes line to see someone standing near the garden fence.

“Do you have an onion to spare?”

“Wait… let me see” as I left the other basket of unhung laundry and skipped into the kitchen.

So I didn’t have an onion but he was happy to leave with 2 shallots instead.

HOPE IN THE FORM OF A MELON

Failure will only inspire you to try again unless you have given up hope of ever succeeding.  To begin you must be interested in whatever you aim to do.  So if you fail once over something you're keen about, you will only endeavour to try harder and put right the things that went wrong.  

I have big gardening dreams so one of the first thing that I set my sight on was growing rock melons from Australia.  Yes, Australia!  I bought a melon, ate it and saved the seeds.  Having big dreams meant growing all the seeds that I've collected from that one single melon and that's like A LOT! 

I was so excited that just a few days after sowing... actually to be more precised, after dumping all the seeds into a small pot and covering them with some earth, the shoots started to sprout.  

 See I wasn't kidding...

So proud of my effort I wore a goofy grin and went around taking lots of photos in different angles.  Seriously some of the shoots were pretty cute!  Check these out...

 

Anyone like my lil' hat...?

 

I was so overwhelmed by all those cute shoots that I left them to fight for space in the little pot while I contemplated what I should do with all of them.   

Meanwhile, rows and rows of round succulent melons hanging from the vines and basking in the sun were already flashing in my head. Seriously I lived on dreams and big ones too! I imagined harvesting a perfect prized melon just like during fall / Halloween where farms / farmers engaged in competing to see who grows the biggest pumpkin.

Big dreams meant no thinning of precious seedlings.  Every shoot was potential melon to me and by the time I was ready to re-pot, I lost more than half of them.   

Here's what left of those shoots

However re-potting does wonder and a couple of the plants  actually blossomed rather well and gave me hope that a melon was on its way when I succumbed to an imaginary flower.  That again got me a little complacent.

To cut the story short, instead of getting nearer to harvesting home grown melons, the plants seemed to have stunted in growth for reasons I've yet to find out four months since I first sown those seeds.  I don't foresee any melon on the vine anytime soon.

So the morale of this story is "don't jump before you leap."  Ask around, read up or familiarise yourself before you shoulder those big dreams. 

It's not a secret that I still harbour hope of harvesting my first melon in the not too distant future but  this time around, I am just sowing a few seeds and saving the rest for later. Watching over a few of them against a whole lot means I have time to nurture them into edible size melons! #hopefully

Yes, I've left a note in my head to re-pot them as soon as the shoot bursts through those seeds.

Hope is my new best friend.  Don't you just hope for something good to happen all the time? ;)

CHIKU'S LITTLE SECRET

Who would have even thought that innocent looking fruit like this has its own little secret?

 

You need this to reach them

Meet Chiku, Chiko, Chikoo, Sapodila, Sapota or Sapote; they're all the same!

They look a little like kiwi fruit; brown and slightly sandy on the outside but without all the 5 o’clock shadow.  They bled latex when plucked.  The flesh when ripen is juicy, extremely sweet and fragrant with a slightly granular texture.  Cut the fruit in half and you see shiny black seeds. 

Tree ripen fruits are the best but just in case the birds beat you to them, pluck them when they’re of a reasonable size.  To hasten the ripening process, toss the fruits in between the grains in your rice bin or wrap the fruits up with newspapers and leave them in room temperature. 

Chiku trees are bushy and pretty tall although cultivars are shorter.  Supposedly in the past, chewing gums were made from latex found in the bark of the trees. That’s how chiclets (brand) gum got their name?

When I posted photos on my Instagram, someone left a comment saying “If you eat 1 - 2 kilos of it you will get drunk.” “If you eat much of it like a kilo, your breath will smell like alcohol.” Yikes!

It’s also said that the flesh from chiku can be fermented to make wine.  That is a little too adventurous for me to experiment right now although wine does sound nice after a day out in the garden. 

They deserve more love

Well, maybe wine in the pipeline...

GOTTA LOVE 'EM

There is no secret that I’m in love with anything natural and good especially when words like “rich source of antioxidants,” “health benefits,” etc pop up.  Who doesn’t??

Ain't she gorgeous?

When I heard from the grapevine that the Clitoria ternatae whose common name is blue pea flower for centuries have been used in traditional ayurvedic medicine and is supposedly good for improving eyesight, the blind as a bat in me just have to give this plant a second glance!  

I Love You

To begin, I love the vivid intensity of these lovely blue flowers and the added bonus is there are lots of them taking refuge all over the fence.

For a long time the natural dye in the flowers have been used for cooking.  The flowers can also be dipped in batter and deep fried.  You can even make tea out of them.  They can also be added to a bowl of salad.  Look at how beautiful they look!

Do bear in mind that if these beautiful flowers are to be consumed, it is best that they be grown without the use of pesticides or chemicals.

 

Why eat something supposedly good with added benefits when in fact it is detrimental to your well being.  If you're growing your own, do it the organic way.

DANCING IN THE RAIN

There's something magical about taking photos after the rain where you find nature at it's most beautiful.  What I love most being out and about as soon as the sky clears is the cool, refreshing and invigorating crisp air.  

It's something I enjoy tremendously; looking up in the sky and catching that spare drop or two of raindrops gliding off the leaves and falling onto me.  

Plumeria

Frangipani

Orchid

Rose

Vinca / Periwinkle

Flashback, I feel just like a child all over again playing in the rain AND shots just seem prettier!

BETTER LATE THAN NEVER

For nineteen months this orchid plant remained barren.  Yes that's one year and 7 long months with 2/3 of the time spent in my apartment and the other 1/3 in MSG.

No amount of cajoling, sweet whispers or wonder food worked.  Out of exasperation, we thought perhaps the plant would only flower in its country of origin, thousands and thousands of miles away.  We were wringing our hands out of exasperation!

 

However one day we got a pleasant  surprise and claimed ownership to two very beautiful blooms.   As usual, like all other flowers my first instinct was to plant my nose in the blooms and I was rewarded with the most delicious scent! It was certainly worth the long wait. 

Then last week during a heavy downpour, the plank holding some potted plants collapsed.  The first thought that flashed in my mind was "Oh.... the orchids!" as we scrambled to salvage the damage.  Other than some bruises on the petals, everything was fine.

Please don't let us wait another two years for the next round of flowers. (*fingers crossed*)

INTRUDERS IN THE GARDEN



I stared at the near naked Vinca (Periwinkle) bush with disbelief!  

Vinca flowers come in a variety of colours eg. shades of pinks, red, white and even purple.  The flowers are unscented and the plant falls under the "poisonous" list of plants but they are very generous in flowering and relatively easy to grow.  They can grow from cuttings or seeds.  The ripe seed pods will scatter when carried by the wind and volunteer plants will spring up everywhere.
 

Just a few days back the whole bush was covered with a crop of beautiful pink but now reduced to such a pathetic sight.  On closer look, the ends of each branch looked like they have been brutally chopped off.  

My first human instinct was of suspicion and anger.  For a moment, I didn't feel safe anymore at the thought of someone intruding into the garden whilst no one was around.

We were so proud of how this Vinca has blossomed over the months.  It started off with a very small seedling of barely a few inches in the flowerbed and how much it has grown.  

So we moved cautiously around the garden preparing to nab our intruder or at least scare the wits out of him and to our pleasant (that it was not a human intruder) horror (that the plant was almost bald!), we caught the culprits in the act.

Meet them....

Time for yoga

Did I tell you this is how you pole dance?

Getting chummy

Looking at how hungry our intruders were, we excused them as they needed a lot of energy to complete their metamorphosis.  Seriously they have as many as 4000 muscles in their bodies... something we just learned! 

We've learned to live and let live.  There have been so many more subsequent sabotage of our Vincas but then they grow just as fast and someone out there has to eat.  It's amazing what is poisonous to us are food for these hungry ones.