Every Cloud has a Green Lining

For the last year and a half, our neighbours have been rebuilding their house. They razed their old house to the ground and built a mansion in its place! We have been suffering from noise, dust and traffic jams because of all the construction vehicles.

Our neighbours decided to build a lap pool along their wall that adjoins us. They asked Mummy very nicely if we would consider chopping down our lovely bamboos that grew along that side of our house. Bamboo leaves are fatal for swimming pool filters!

Mummy is a firm believer in being a good neighbour so she agreed with a heavy heart (she is very fond of bamboo, you see). Our neighbours tried to make it up to her by building 6 sets of 2.1m trellises along that wall and we have started our new climbing vegetable garden!

Here are the bittergourds. Daddy took the photo but strangely managed to avoid getting many of the bittergourds in the photo. If you look hard you can see 3. Actually we have about 8 and have harvested one already. Look at the number of flowers we have!

Here are the long beans. Remember our bananas had a signal banana? Well our long beans followed their example. Here is the signal bean which I yanked off before school this morning. I am holding it down by my shoes so you can’t see my face. Daddy says privacy is privacy. Hmmmm ignore my tummy!

And here is the trellis for the long beans. Don’t the plants look healthy?

The Theory of Relativity

The Big Sister occasionally mentions this theory. It seems a bit confused. Or maybe I mean The Big Sister seems confused. She usually is. She has just started driving lessons and her instructor seems to spend a lot of time exclaiming “ALAMAK!!!”. That is not a good sign.

Anyway. We have a new pot of long beans because the old ones are not so productive. The new bean plants have impressive leaves! Look!

Mummy said that no one would know how big the leaf is, what with photoshop and all those fancy things. So I took another photo with my hand on the leaf:

Then Mummy said since no one knew how big my hand is, how would they have any idea how big the leaf is? So I will tell you. I am 9 years old, 136cm tall and 32kg. That is a good sized 9 year old. I cannot remember what percentile I am on (a percentile means that the doctor compares you to all other 9 year olds in the universe) but I will ask my Pediatrician and post later. My Pediatrician knows all about these things and has a fat file in her clinic where she writes stuff down so she doesn’t forget.

Anyway, then I had a bright idea. Here is a leaf next to my slipper!

OK. I am a size 35 European. I mean my shoe size, not me. I am Chinese. In case you want to know, my foot and The Big Sister’s foot are the same size. This means we are European size 35 and British size 2.5. Strangely, I am American boys size 3, but The Big Sister is American ladies size 5! You can have a look at this chart if you don’t believe me. http://www.dancesport.uk.com/shoes/conchart.htm. If you don’t have a size 35 shoe at home, maybe you could go to a shoe shop and have a look? Then you would know pretty accurately how big the long bean’s leaves are!

Just Some Pretty Long Beans

My long beans are beaning away:

I like these artistic shots:

Signs of Life

I have been under a lot of pressure to blog again. Some people do NOT understand that 2 English compositions and 2 Chinese compositions a week are enough torture for an 8 year old (almost 9).

Anyway, I am back again by popular demand. So this blog is showing Signs of Life. My garden always shows Signs of Life. Here are some examples:

The Old Faithful Long Beans

Finally! Successful No-Mealy (touch wood) Chillies. Unfortunately we cannot remember if they are meant to stay green or turn red!

See? My spring onions have sprung!

 

 

 

 

And even the frangipani is budding!

So all is well in the garden, and I will post some more later tonight if I catch my breath!

 

Oops I forgot about the red okra, from our American seeds. Here it is. It produces very, very well.

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?

Reaching for the Stars

I had a big long bean order and so we germinated 6 seeds. They popped up in 2 days. Here they are, reaching out (actually they’re reaching for the sun, not the stars). They look  a bit like snakes, don’t you think?

New Gen Beans

I  have an iPad 2, but now there is an iPad 3. I tried to tell Mummy the differences but she wasn’t terribly interested. The Big Sister has an iPhone 4S, and now there is an iPhone 5, but her godpa will buy her the iPhone 5 for Christmas for sure. Her godpa is very fond of gadgets. Mummy says she is Just Plain Spoilt.

 

Anyway, we grew Long Beans 3 and Purple Long Beans 2. They are doing well. Long Beans 3 are beaning away. Look!

 

 

Second Wind

Sometimes I am very grumpy around dinner time and Mummy says, “early bed for you, young man!”. But it’s a miracle, once I’ve had dinner and my shower, I am not grumpy any more and I refuse to go to bed! Mummy often complains about my second wind.

Our purple long beans went all quiet for a while, and we thought it was just as well we planted a whole new trough of them. But they’ve caught their second wind too!

NewBeanies

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.

 

 

Purple Long Beans in the Sunset

Here they are, in the sun:

And here they are after the sun went down: