Right Angled Banana

We have been having terrible weather here in Singapore. It has been very hot and muggy. Our helper is always rushing outside to bring in the clothes because storm clouds loom – the moment she brings them in, the sky turns blue again!

All this hot weather is doing terrible things to our plants. Our banana plant started to lean over to one side so Mummy tied it to the fence with gardening tape.Unfortunately our bananas are fed very well, so the weight of the bunch dragged the plant down at right angles! Our neighbour’s contractors had to be summoned urgently to help – they lifted the bent bit up gently and Mummy and our helper bandaged it to the fence, see? Now the plant looks like it has a plaster cast around the stem, but actually it is a towel-cast and a Daiso-tablecloth-cast.

Then to make sure there was more support, our helper stuck a pole against the towel-cast.

I don’t think that will help at all because the pole is very narrow, but maybe this is what people do in Myanmar. In Singapore most people use 2 poles and make an X and the plant rests on the X. I think I should speak to Godma’s husband who is an expert on casts. Maybe he can help with our next banana plant.

 

A Tale of Two Papayas

Have you played the game QuizUp? It’s a game you can play on your iPad or iPhone. You play against a random person and answer 7 questions on a topic of your choice. I like Medicine, Name the Candy and Name the Animal best. Mummy plays Literature (Classics and Children’s Literature), Classical Music and Food. She is also very good at Name the Candy but is a bit embarrassed to tell people that.

Anyway QuizUp is the ONLY game Mummy has on her iPad. My Pediatrician says she does not know why Mummy cannot instal mindless games like she does. Mummy rolls her eyes when my Pediatrician says things like that. It is because Mummy is a Tiger Mum (Godma too) and my Pediatrician is a Meow Mum.

In Literature, there is a very long book by Charles Dickens called A Tale of Two Cities. It is very boring. Even when Mummy tells me just the exciting bits, it is still boring. Today I have a tale of Two Papayas (actually papaya plants). It is not at all boring.

You already know about my first papaya plant, right? I’ve posted about it here, and here, and here, and here. When I came back from the holidays, I was very happy to see how it had been busy!

The photo below was taken from below, sometimes it’s useful to be short. I know not all the papayas look perfect, but that’s just fine.

OK so that was one papaya. The second papaya is a different type – not a Hawaiian pawpaw like the first papaya. Even though the second plant is not even 3 feet tall, look what it has! A Lone Ranger Papaya!

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.

Girlnanas and Boynanas

Girlnanas become nice fat edible bananas and they grow up first and higher up on the stem. The Big Sister says there is something I should learn from this.

See the sterile flowers? They look and rustle like paper. They will fall off and make a mess on the ground.

 

 

 

 

Boynanas come up later and they never develop. Growers chop them off so the girls get more nutrition. Luckily Mummy didn’t practice banana methods with her kids, hahaha! Anyway, have a look at these boynanas. At least, I think they are boynanas. Because they are much smaller than the girlnanas further up.

Mummy made me use a black permie marker to write names on each hand of bananas. By the way, what I thought was a bunch (like the one you buy from Kevin our fruit man at Ghim Moh) is actually called a hand. A bunch means all the hands along the stem!! Back to my story. Mummy accused me of promising bananas to more people than we have bananas. So now we are labelling each hand of bananas. So far we have reserved bananas for Godma, my Pediatrician’s husband, The Big Sister’s godpa, our neighbours and my dentist. Luckily I don’t like bananas so I don’t mind giving all of them away.

Twins

Mummy has 2 twins, a Day Evil Twin (called Day ET) who is my Godma, and a Night Evil Twin who is my Pediatrician. All of them look very different. My Godma’s hair is shorter than mine and sometimes when she plays golf, she gets mistaken for the boy caddy. My Pediatrician looks more patient than Godma and Mummy. Actually I can spot other differences but Mummy says no need to discuss those!

We have twin purple long beans. The flowers came out at the same time, but somehow one grew faster than the other when they became beans. See?

Pudding

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.

Dinner Tonight

We ate a dozen of our eggplants for dinner tonight. The lying ones and the Malaysians. They were yummy. We still have plenty more on our Malaysian eggplant plants.

But I am getting worried because the plants are looking a bit droopy. Maybe they have too many fruits on them. Mummy says if a plant or person has too many babies, they will be worn out. I am not so sure, so I will check with Godma and my Pediatrician when I see them next.

 

Update on the State of the Bangkwang

I had to go back to school today despite coughing like a dog (do dogs cough?). Mummy insisted. My Pediatrician went to Bangkok (for work, she said) and so I could not call her to convince her I was still sick. And Godma is as unsympathetic as Mummy.

Anyway, while I was at school, the green and brown bangkwang pod turned fully brown, look! Maybe finally I’ll be allowed to pull it up.

COMPETITION!!!

I have decided to harvest my remaining twin wintermelon (its twin was sadly chopped off by Mummy), on Tuesday 3 July in the evening. I want to give it to the kind CEO of the Gardens on the Bay who invited me to have a VIP preview.

But before I harvest it, I am having a competition to guess the WEIGHT of the wintermelon. Anyone can participate, but please get your estimates (to the nearest gram) in by Tuesday 5pm. Daddy will audit the weighing in and the various entries, and we will announce the results sometime on Tuesday night (depending what time Daddy gets home). There will be prizes for best guess and worst guess and consolation prizes!!!

We are not allowing family members to participate because Mummy says it is bad gardens government governance to have related party transactions and potential cornflakes conflicts. Something like that, anyway. It just means it’s unfair. She says it a lot about City Harvest Church.

Just to give you an idea, here is a photo. Its length is 31cm and girth is 37cm.

Godma and my Pediatrician have already sent in their estimates. My Pediatrician said she is an Expert and she can guess the weights of the newborns she looks after within 100-200g. Last night she estimated 2630g. This afternoon she estimated 1630g. She claims things weigh more at night than in the day. This must make the parents of the babies very alarmed I think.

UPDATE!!! This competition is getting too competitive! Aunty E sent this sms to Mummy: “Based on the available data, my consultants say that it should weigh **** grams at precisely 5pm on Tuesday. However, they caution that’s subject to it snowing in southern New Zealand for at least 6 hours before then. My astrologers further add that the sun should also align with tomorrow’s Sun Ho’s headlines. And the black magic fellas are coordinating a hacker convention to ensure your weighing scale’s biasness towards our entry.” Does anyone understand this???