Here are our new hairy gourd seedlings, grown from our reliable Bangkok seeds, bought by reliable Aunty SS (she is a very important person, but I cannot say what she is, except that Mummy calls her Amb…er) and couriered by reliable Aunty SJ (she is not so very important but I like her anyway).
Now here is the close up. See? The seeds were pink. Grandpa says it is because the seed people put fungicide on it.
I like my wonderful dentist very much but lately I have been afraid of going to her house. Not because of her 2 huge dogs (very huge, one is even heavier than The Big Sister). But because everytime I go, she yanks a loose tooth out! She says it will save Mummy a trip to her clinic.
Anyway, one night while we were there, apparently Mummy smelled a most wonderful pandan perfume. It turned out to be a beautiful climber called Vallaris Glabra, or the bread flower plant, or the pandan flower plant. I never noticed it or smelled it because I was trying to make myself invisible inside the house (it didn’t work, I still got a tooth yanked out before we went home).
Anyway again, here is a link to NParks’ website that will tell you more about this plant.
Guess what? Our wonderful dentist delivered a whole plant for Mummy a week ago! Here is an artistic shot of the upper part of the plant:
And here is an even more artistic shot of the underside of one of its leaves:
Just for the record, it is a miracle I have any teeth left at all. Even though the Tooth Fairy gives me $50 per tooth, it’s not worth the yanking out. Daddy says $50 is outrageous, but Grandpa says it’s just inflation.
My very last post was about bananas and I wrote it about 3 months ago. Well it took 3 months from Bell to Banana – which means many people have been LYING to me: the Paid Gardener, our wonderful dentist’s husband, and Grandpa. They said bananas come in 2 kinds – 45-day and 60-day. Mine, they claimed, are 60-day bananas – except they are 90-day bananas.
Here are my 90-day bananas:
If you look carefully, you can see the signal banana turning yellow, just at its tip. Look to the right? If you can’t see it, here is a close up shot:
When the signal banana is more or less totally yellow, the whole stem of bananas is ready for picking! We have been arguing at home about what the collective noun is for bananas. Seems like the correct word for the “bunch” of bananas you can buy from Kevin our fruit man is “hand”. “Bunch” or “comb” refers to the whole stem of bananas you see in the photo above!
These bananas look bigger than our first bunch. I think my by-products are getting more nutritious!
Oh one thing I did not write about before is this. Just like the signal banana signals that the bunch is ready for harvest, the banana tree puts out a special leaf, called a spade leaf, just before the banana bell emerges.
See? I call a spade a spade, hahahahaha!!!
When I was in Australia, I went to a huge garden centre called Masters. I saw some solar lights that had spikes at the bottom and insisted on buying them. Mummy said no, they were made of glass and would be a hassle to bring home, but Daddy kindly offered to carry them back so I got my wish! I wanted 12 of the lights but Mummy shrieked certainly not and said 4 or nothing.
So I got 4 lights. Have a look:
The solar panel is supposed to be able to power the light inside but so far nothing is happening! Grandpa did say for $3 what did I expect?
Clue – the bats like it. You can tell from the net.
Give up? Here’s another clue.
Yuo. That’s right. It’s lychee! Grandpa got fed up of the bats that decimated his crop so he threw a huge net over the tree. Guess what? Tha bats managed to eat the fruit anyway!
Happy New Year, Everyone! I am back from my long holidays in Australia. I am as brown as a berry (although the berries I am used to are blue and red, not brown) and our helper says I have fattened up.
Before you start worrying that I am having a hard time in 2014, let me tell you why it is a rocky start to my year. I am very very jealous. Look what Grandpa has in his garden which he DID NOT EVEN PLANT. Grandma dropped some compost material accidentally in his bangkwang patch and look what came up? 6 of them. All HUGE.
Do you know why these melons are called rockmelons? Not because they are as hard and heavy as rocks. Because they come from Rockhampton in North Queensland.
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!!
Just for you to compare.
12 days ago, I asked you to applaud the bananas below.
And now, compare them to the bigger and yellower bananas today:
Can you see the difference? The hands are spreading out and definitely fatter and less green. Grandpa said they would be ready for harvest in 26 days’ time.
A couple of nights ago there was a big storm! Our papaya tree (the one that was transplanted by Grandpa into the big Toyogo pot – see this and that) blew over. When Daddy woke up in the morning, he found it leaning on our big car. He righted the tree, and it seems quite well, except that… well, look for yourself!
There are 2 right angles. We are learning geometry at school. That is very cruel to 9 year olds. Anyway, I asked The Big Sister, if 90 degrees is a right angle, what is a wrong angle?
After my post on Mr Beethoven, the flowers on my papaya tree did Nothing. I waited and waited but the buds stayed buddy. I got all worried because Novice Gardener said that the buds might be boyayas (useless) rather than girlyayas (fruit).
But today, guess what? The buds opened!
Does anyone know why the flower has spots?
Grandpa says the papayas are finally doing things because he transplanted the tree into a bigger pot. He accused Mummy of cramping their style so we all made a trip to Toyogo in Toa Payoh and bought the second-largest pot there. Grandpa wanted the biggest pot but Mummy said she was absolutely not having the papaya tree the size of our (now gone) okra plants. Grandpa planted those in the ground and they grew up past our second storey windows, so it was a terrible job harvesting pods. Mummy was particularly annoyed because they were meant to be dwarf plants.
We needed a lot of soil to fill the pot. Luckily my wonderful dentist’s wonderful husband sent me 2 huge bags of peat. He is the man who owns the power generator at Gardens by the Bay that burns all the plant waste from the Gardens and all around Singapore. It is called a biomass power generator or combined heat power steam turbine, I think. I read it here and here. Anyway my peat is from the Gardens and I filled half the pot with it, so maybe that’s why the papaya tree is happy.
Growing Like a Weed 