Ramadan's Twilight

Seeds manifesting the cycle of life..

Another soul passed on the 23rd of Ramadan, this time the dear mother of a friend. I met this wonderful lady for the first and only time during a tahlil at her daughter's house a week before Ramadan. She was a gentle, smiling, laughing lady and had many stories to tell. Her positive vibe was infectious indeed and I left the house with a happy heart and a spring in my step. Little did I know that the next time I crossed the threshold of that house would be to attend a tahlil for her yesterday. May Allah accept her deeds, fill her grave with light and grant a place in Jannah with our Master, Rasul Allah sallallahu alaihi wa alihi wa sallam.

Just before Ramadan, a friend of ours in his early thirties, passed away due to a sudden heart attack, leaving behind a wife and 4 young children. He was a young man with his future ahead of him, having just completed his studies abroad and had taken up a lecturing post. While I pray that Allah will lighten the burden of the family he left behind, I know that he is fortunate indeed to have forged many friendships with so many people, all of whom have nothing but good things to say about him. Fortunate indeed he is who has children to pray for him, a good wife to raise his children to remember him, and parents who are content and whom have forgiven him.

And yet there is also joy. A gardening friend had a baby recently, and another relative also welcomed a baby into this world on the night of the 27th of Ramadan. Alhamdulillah. May these children be the light of their parents' eyes, amiin!

And so does the cycle of life continue, even in our humble little garden, where plants are seeded, poke their heads out to bask in the sunlight, grow, bear fruit and pass on, leaving a legacy of seed to continue on the same path.

I did manage to muck about in the garden a bit before leaving to do errands. I moved some purple kohlrabi seedlings onto a bed, total of 8 little seedlings. By afternoon some of them looked a bit burnt by the sun, so I watered them and they seemed fine.

Purple Vienna Kohlrabi babies. About 2 weeks old? I tend to move my seedlings a bit late.

Then I uprooted the Clemson Spineless Okra from their sowing pot, and put them at the other end of the same bed:

2 of the 5 okra babies. I hope they are happy here,

Then I remembered I had 2 roselle seedlings, grown from seed originating from Pun Pun, a kind gift from doyouthinkitspossible:

Roselle seedling by the chain-link fence, flanked by some tiny neglected hedges.

I wonder if you can see the Red Romaine Lettuce seedlings in the picture below? This was the same pot that previously housed the Clemson Spineless Okra seedlings.

Grow well, baby lettuces!

I then left the home to do some errands, and managed to drop by a hardware store on my way back. I wanted green wire, but they didn't have any so I settled for these PVC chains instead as a support for my Purple King Climbing Bean plants:

Climb, O King, Climbst Thee upon these Pure Ivory Chains!
(I wonder if they are called Purple King because purple is the colour of royalty?)

After securing the chains for both of my beans, I had a quick look around my garden and noticed that my hybrid carrots had flowered. Whoopsy I didn't plan for this, but maybe the seeds (if I get any!) might be worth germinating as a long-term experiment. We'll see.

There were 2 flower heads from the same carrot. Maybe they bolted because of the unpredictable weather, blazing hot one moment and pouring rain the next.

And the first banana capsicum is out! :-)

So here are some greens I harvested for iftar the other day, a motley collection of rainbow chard, mustard greens and kailan with some basil thrown in for good measure. I didn't eat these, rather, I drank these as a juice.

I was in a hurry so I didn't pick much. Close to iftar time! I ended up with only 1/4 cup of juice in my first juicing attempt.

I thought I'd try giving this juicing thingy a go. I heard about the blades in blenders inactivating enzymes, so I got this little manual juicer baby which grinds and crushes instead of chops. There is definitely some work involved during grinding, but it works just fine for leafy greens, celery, peaches, ginger. But juicing beetroot has given me the workout my upper arms sorely (pun intended!) needed. Haha! Assembly/disassembly was straightforward. It is also quite easy to clean, just needing a quick rinse under the tap.

The manual juicer I got using coupons and RM30.90 from Cosway. That's my cat Chunkey checking out the juicer box. The real juicer is on my kitchen counter air-drying after I used it for iftar this morning.