I just blogged about my new luffa flowers a few hours ago, then I went to the airport to send my Pediatrician off to Malaysia (Home of the Truthful Plants). Maybe she will buy me more seeds?
By the time I came home, guess what. The luffa flower opened!
We germinated a few bittergourd seeds from the market opposite church – ordinary old bittergourd seeds on 30 August. The plants didn’t grow that quickly, but look, they are setting flowers all over! (Here’s one, I forgot to take the rest.)
The word for being advanced for your age is precocious. The bittergourd plants are precocious. The Big Sister was very precocious. When she was one-and-a-half, she wanted to sleep in my parents’ bed. Daddy told her it was too small for 3 people, so she told him to sleep on the floor. Daddy said the floor was too hard. The Big Sister told him firmly that he was fat enough.
I am not quite as precocious although my Chinese teacher told my Grandma that I was “nga chat chat”. I don’t know if it is a compliment?
We have 2 lovely female zucchini flowers, but believe it or not, this time we have absolutely no male flowers! I told Mummy since they are in the same family as our cucumbers, to use the cucumber boys to pollinate the zucchini girls.
If this is successful, we will have a cucchini! Mummy says maybe we should pollinate it with the bicolour corn from Taiwan, then we would have a bicchini. Get it? Bikini!
A newbie is someone who is new at doing something. Like me and homework. It always feels new to me.
We have 2 new pots of Thai long beans. One is the brown-seeded long bean, and the other is the faithful purple long bean. The purple bean was speeding up a trellis on our wooden screen, just like a F1 driver along a straight. Unfortunately once it got to the top of the trellis, it kind of got all unsure where to go and the 4 bean plants had a crash, look!
The brown-seeded long bean is growing in our tomato pots (Mummy hexed all tomatoes), and is also quite happy there between the bamboo and the red okra.
Mummy told me this morning that another Star of David okra flower was wide open, but I had a million things to do and did not take a photo. By the time I trotted outside, the flower had curled its petals tightly. It looks just like a baby wrapped in blankies! At Christmastime, we say that Mary wrapped baby Jesus in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger. The okra has no manger but never mind.
At Sunday School we sing a song “Climb, Climb Up Sunshine Mountain”. Mummy tells me that my eldest grandaunt used to sing it with me when I was a baby. She has gone to heaven now.
Novice Gardener let her nephew climb up a ladder to pluck papayas. We have a ladder but no papayas (Mummy dislikes growing them and considers them a big tomato). So today I did some climbing too.
First I climbed on our study table to take birds-eye photos of the okra printing that Mummy and I did this afternoon. We used 2 cross-sections of the Star of David okra. I stamped the small cross-section and Mummy stamped the big. You can see the chopped up okra at the bottom of the picture:
Secondly, I climbed up a stool to take photos of the luffas. Finally we have clusters of boy flowers and one girl. Mummy is nervous because we are not successful luffa growers, but I think these Malaysian luffa seeds from Grandpa should learn from the Malaysian eggplants. They are right next to each other in our garden.
Here is a double cluster – the right cluster even has a petalled flower already!
And finally, the one girl:
I did more climbing but will write about it in the next post, OK?
The Big Sister always tells me she has a 6-pack but I only have a tummy. I am not sure what is in her 6-pack. Our Star of David okras have a 6-ridge! That’s my old orange watering can in the background.
Pictures speak for themselves. The idiom is a picture speaks a thousand words. Yuks. English exam. Look for the cobs. They have separated from the main stalk.
Mummy has been on a pudding rampage. In one week, she made pumpkin pie (getting ready for Halloween although Daddy complained that we haven’t even finished mid-autumn festival yet), then 2 lots of orange delicious pudding for Aunty E’s mummy. Aunty E is the funny aunty who wanted to consult an astrologer to guess the weight of my wintermelon. Anyway Mummy is trying to achieve the orange delicious of Aunty E’s mummy’s memory. Something like that. But Aunty E’s mummy is very old so I don’t know if her memory is so good? Whatever Mummy has made is not the same as she remembers, so Mummy is on a Mission to recreate the Memory.
Then Mummy made chocolate fudge pudding (warm) for Godma because Godma sent me a braised duck in a nice rectangular dish that was perfect for making a pudding so Mummy made a pudding. She took the duck out first and washed the dish, of course!!!
Anyway, this is not a food blog. So I am telling you all of this to introduce the REAL STORY. (I also have to practice composition for my English exam, yuks.)
Today Mummy mixed beaten egg yolks and worm tea and crushed egg shells to make a pudding for our plants. It smelled horrible but Mummy says plants don’t mind. If I were a plant I’d ask for ice cream instead. My favourite flavours are attapchee and peanut but I finished both tonight, so here is a photo of my next favourite which is sweetcorn. At my birthday party, we had an ice cream truck full of attapchee, peanut and sweetcorn ice cream (200 serves) which was lots of fun.
Novice Gardener’s Australian dark green bittergourd seedling that we gave her has settled well in her garden.
Ours has done well too, and now is going from strength to strength. Look!
Growing Like a Weed 