Banana Bounty

Today is a Very Important Day. One of our bananas turned a pale, delicate, yellow. Grandpa’s rule is as long as ONE banana turns yellow, the whole bunch is ready. So the Paid Gardener came and cut off the entire bunch! We got 8 hands from it. The total weight was just about 15kg, but the Paid Gardener said something was wrong with our scales because he thought it weighed at least 20kg. He claimed he was an experienced banana man.

I labelled almost every single hand with a recipient’s name. The biggest is Godma’s, and it was almost 3kg! See the yellow banana on the right? That was our signal banana.

Just so you can admire more bananas, the next biggest hand is for my Pediatrician’s husband. He only eats bananas. I mean, the only fruit he eats is banana.

Then next on the bunch came our kind neighbour’s bananas. See? It says #12. We are at #10. Like Downing Street, you know.

This was a GOOD JOB WELL DONE!!

Pruning

Curious Gardener recently blogged about savage pruning. Mummy, as you all know, is also called Scissorhands. But let me tell you the moral of the story. Sometimes pruning is not just a good thing. It is essential!

Look what happened to poor Godma who did not prune often or savagely. What a disaster!

That is Godma’s driveway. She could not get in or out by car! It was all very exciting – I thought so, but Godma did not seem to think so. Anyway, it was a terrible job chopping up the tree and carting it off in pieces. Now Godma has pruned (actually, chopped down is more like it) SIX MORE TREES! I can go select some new ones for her, hopefully.

Kept for Seed – Uh uh

Novice Gardener and Curious Gardener are very good about keeping some fruit til they are really old and then saving the seed. I thought I would try that too. Actually the truth is I didn’t see the red okra til it was OLD so I thought I might as well. I am not sure how I missed it because red okras are very RED indeed.

Because of the rain, the okra pod didn’t dry up and become rattly. Instead it became nasty-mouldy!

The Bitter Decline of the Bittergourd

After giving us many, many bittergourd, our bittergourd plants caught powdery mildew from all the rain and the overgrown frangipani that blocks out sunlight. I wonder if the plants caught the mildew from Curious Gardener’s marrow!

Here is a leaf which looks as if someone sprinkled icing sugar on it:

I think the whole trellis is a goner!

Out of Darkness into Light

Lately I have been singing along with Steve Green in the car. The Big Sister and Mummy unearthed some old CDs and screamed with excitement. They found 3 CDs by Steve Green and now we play them all the time.

One of the songs is A Chosen Generation, and the bible verse tells us that God chose us and called us out of darkness into His marvellous Light. Light is very useful. I will show you why.

Look at this. What is it? You can’t really tell because it is so dark.

But when you have marvellous light (actually any old light will do), see?

It’s just another of our papaya leaves that got bent when the tree fell over – again! We have now moved the tree next to the fence and TIED it there. We have had gale force winds and storms. Maybe I am exaggerating. My cousins in London really did last week though.