It is a long weekend here in Singapore so I have had plenty of time to make a nuisance of myself, Mummy says. To prove Mummy wrong, I decided to be constructive and take photos.
Here is our papaya tree. It’s doing well except that the fruit is petite and not enough for sharing. But it has a very small cavity inside only, so really, it is all flesh. Luckily I don’t like papayas.
Somehow it found itself in the same pot as our papaya-mango?
We thought it was a pumpkin but when the first flowers appeared, uh uh. Looks like a cucumber flower! Anyone want to hazard a guess?
See the 2 trees side by side?
Do they look like the same plant to you? In case it isn’t obvious, let me show you each tree separately. Here’s one (the one on the left):
And here’s the other (the one on the right):
OK, they are both papaya trees, that’s obvious. One has a single fruit. The other has many fruit. Singular and Plural. The Big Sister yells at me when I get my verbs wrong because I get confused between singular and plural. But guess what. She asked me when the mango would be ready for eating!!!
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!
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.
Is this a bad sign??
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 all the worrying comments on my papaya flower that was not going to become a fruit, my papaya tree decided to make me feel better.
I felt bettter when I saw this:
and this (look hard at the base of the flower):
But I’m not sure about this one:
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.
If you do, you would know his Fifth Symphony which starts with Da da da Dum! Da da da Dum! The Big Sister has played it in orchestra.
In my garden, you can sing Ba na na Na! Pa pa pa Ya! And you can admire the Banananas that I’ve written about many times.
Here is the start of the Papapayas. Our ironing aunty pointed them out to me. I really, really hope they become papayas. Real papayas.
Growing Like a Weed 