Soliloquy in the Garden of My Mind

There is a beautiful ray of light coming through the lush green canopy overhead. Raindrops from a recent storm cling precariously at the edges of slender tendrils of loofah shoots, and at the ends of their dangling root fronds. The air smelled sharp, and fresh, and new. But there is the unmistakable smell of decay in this lush green paradise. I part the root fronds like a frail curtain, and step through into my tropical domain.

I survey the garden before me. A pruned Malaysian cherry tree, putting forth new leaves stands proudly to my left, behind several pots and polystyrene boxes.

One of the boxes contain a flush of new purple leaves, courtesy of sweet potato cuttings I had staked within scarcely a fortnight ago. The other boxes were bereft of any useful plant, save a few sad-looking Portulaca stems and a single water convolvulus (kangkung) plant, a brave survivor of a spate of weeding done a few weeks ago.

Two dandelion bulbs in a pot, trying to put forth new shoots. A few lillies who have yet to follow in the dandelions' footsteps. Several spent and tired-looking terung pipit plants look bare.

Small, wavy plucks of carrot and parsnip leaves at the border, always in danger of being trod upon by hapless visitors.

At the far right ahead, the gnarled woody bark of the loofah plant tries to sneak its way up the cat enclosure, while trailing its roots in search of water, in its not-so-secret quest for dominion of the garden.

The loofah's loftiest parts threaten to enclose my first floor bedroom windows. Sometime in the near future, I will look forward to waking up in the morning, opening my windows for fresh air and plucking a loofah right out of my window. But for the time being, I look upwards at the black netting just above my head, trying to ascertain whether there are any new loofahs ripe for the plucking. I spy a few, and decide to save them for my parents who will be visiting me this weekend.

A survey of some of the compost tyres, previously home to some tomato plants, reveal the source of the unpleasant odour. A few kittens lay rotting in the tires, the result of unsuccessful birthing by Miss Poogey, a stray who comes round for the excellent gourmet catfood. I sigh in sadness. I knew of these little deaths beforehand, but in the horror of my discovery, I had fled into the safety of my house and tried to process my grief. I kept myself busy reorganising my cluttered, eclectic home, in lieu of relatives descending upon us for a wedding this weekend. A gang of worker kerenggas (large red ants) are already at work, harvesting whatever nutrition they could from the poor kittens. I throw some soil into the tyre, to mask the smell and give the poor kitties a hodge-potch funeral. Rest in peace, little ones.

In the end, we are all dust.

Mission accomplished, I turn my attention towards the polystyrene box filled with sweet potato leaves. A previous harvest turned out to be bountiful by the Grace of Allah, so I am determined to grow more of these polydactyl-like plants.

I spy some tiny sweet potato plants growing out of the ground, not far from their progenitor's box.

I carefully dug them out, with their tiny, sweet potato tuberous roots at their ends. I look around for a better place to home them, and decide on one of the sorry-looking  polystyrene boxes. I manage to dig out 5 miniscule plants in all.

I look again around the polystyrene boxes, and spy several new shoots in the ground near me. I identify these to be young loofah plants. These must have been from the seeds and loofahs I was drying at the wooden pangkin nearby. I touch them gently, and let them be. Perhaps someone would want these precious little plants. I make a mental note to ask my relatives during the upcoming wedding.

I poke about at my sowing tray, and note to my dismay that things are pretty much the same as last week. No sign of any flower seedlings, not cayenne pepper, nor alpine strawberries. The Rouge de Marmande Tomato shoots seem to be doing well so far, and so are the Soarer Cucumbers. I walk over to a shallow pot where I had tossed a dried-up and shrivelled Sweet Red Cherry Tomato I found lurking in a corner of my refridgerator. To my delight, I spy several young tomato seedlings. I crow with happiness to find some bright red Rainbow Chard seedlings in a plastic Baba pot nearby that survived the heavy downpours.

I smile to myself, snap a few pictures, and while humming a tune under my breath, I step back indoors.

Glorious Gutter Garden Update, among others

(I drafted this entry on another device, but it wouldn't post to Blogger. So I emailed to myself, copied-pasted here and inserted the photos again. Sigh)

Growth seems to have slowed down a bit, with not much height difference but with more new shoots. I had been away for 6 days and pretty much left the garden to the whims of nature. I hoped that the previous weather pattern of hot sunny days followed by heavy rains at night would sustain growth. Above left are some Paris Market carrot shoots, an unidentified small shoot, and towards the middle an unidentified big shoot. Can anyone help identify it for me at this early stage? Potential candidates are bitter gourd (peria katak) or pot marigold (calendula). I wonder if I can make tea out of these calendula? :-)

Above are yellow pear cherry tomato shoots, with 2 holy basil plants as companions. I might move these into my cat enclosure once they are big enough to need support. Quite excited about these babies.

Remember my sowing plot in a previous entry? Here is a pic of the layout:

The empty pot now has sunflower shoots! Woohoo!

And below are the plants today:

Chinese forget-me-nots, roselle and Siamese hot chilis have yet to grace us with their appearance. But yellow pear cherry tomatos, sweet red cherry tomatos, pak choy, cherrytime capsicum (in polybag), mixed colours sunflower and lemon basil have broken the soil surface. I suspect that the 'chrysanthemum shoots' are actually some ivy-like weed that has made a home in my garden. But I'll let them grow a bit more to be really sure. In the brown plastic pot on the right is my precious loofa gourd (petola sarang). Precious because its' predecessor became a hungry slug's dinner. Which is a pity because I only got that seedling after a wait of almost 2 months. But today it seems a bit wilted. Maybe it is sad because it has no place to climb? So I placed it next to my cat enclosure, and hung some of the tendrils on the wires.

Surprise, surprise, above are another 2 loofah gourd seedlings that popped out of the blue :-) Alhamdulillah.

Above are my 2 surviving purple chili plants after the virus epidemic a few months ago. I have only eaten 1 fruit from these, the rest I am keeping for seed. The brown pot in the middle has the tuber of a daffodil.

Beautiful while it lasted.

 The picture above shows the daffodils in full bloom, when I first obtained the plant with 5 tubers. I gave away 3 tubers to a gardening enthusiast I know for safekeeping (so in case I kill my daffodils I may be able to get some from him). The daffodils survived 3 weeks indoors. But unfortunately about a month after moving them outside, they started to show signs of unhappiness, and the leaves finally died away. I was a bit upset, but kept the tubers anyway just in case they might 'wake up'. This tuber seems a bit happy, doesn't it? A bit fresh-looking, not all dried-up like its poor friend (not pictured, poor thing!)

My kangkong (water convolvulus) that is threatening to take over the plot :-) I must eat these more. I don't really mind the neighbourhood insect-pests getting some snacks from these, because really I have plenty to share.

These are kacang panjang renek or snake bush beans (I am making my own translation at the moment, LOL). This is after about a week. I plan to move them to a permanent sunny spot, and give away one of the plants to an old lady I know.. I have repotted 2 of them now.

Glory in the Gutter...

In a previous post I showed the beginnings of my Glorious Gutter Garden(C).

I sowed some seeds on the 28th of May and 30st of May, as laid out in the diagrams below:

Rain gutter, divided into 2 parts. The bitter gourd in bold purple text was sowed 2 days later, when I learned from Tukang Kebun about suitable companions for carrots.

Some pots I rescued from inside my cat enclosure, and turned into sowing beds. There is still a pot without any seeds in it because I can't decide what to sow. It is a wide and shallow pot. Maybe more cabbages and spring onions? The square shapes denote either polybags or square plastic pots. Again, bold purple text denotes seeds sown on 30 May.
UPDATE: the empty pot has been sown with mixed colour sunflower seeds on 2nd June. :-)

Lets see what has happened since then:

I think these are baby daikon radishes. Woo hoo!

And these, might be the purple cabbage or purple kohlrabi, not sure which.

C'mon tell me this looks like pot marigold? Yes? That looks like the seed, right?

I honestly am not sure what these are. These are sprouting in other spots too along the rain gutter.

Sorry for the poor quality pic. From the prickly shape of the seeds, I believe these are rainbow chards. They have been washed further right down the gutter by the heavy rains which hit my area almost every night lately.

Yellow pear cherry tomato seedlings, they are tiny, can you spot them? The bigger plant on top is a holy basil I placed there in the pot as a ready companion for the tomato plants.

Sweet red cherry tomatoes, insha Allah. :-)

I am quite excited by these seedlings. Thank you to TukangKebun at Kebun Bahagia Bersama from whom I obtained most of the seeds, and En Iskandar at TanamSendiri.com for the chrysanthemum, forget-me-not, mixed colour sunflower, bitter gourd and Siamese hot chilli seeds. :-)

Great minds think alike.. Repurposing Rain Gutters as Veggie Beds

This will be a quick one, as I am inspired by a discussion with some friends on successful veggie planting in a recycled rain gutter.

When we installed a perspex awning over our front porch, we had to have a portion of our rain gutter removed. I had the half-baked idea then of digging a hole to bury the spout for water drainage, filling the space with soil and planting veggies in it. Except I never got around to doing it.

So a few weeks ago I hit upon the idea of sticking the gutter into existing rain drains that run around the house (all kitchen/bathroom waste water goes straight into the septic tank, so our rain drains that run around the perimeter of the house are fairly clean and unclogged because only rain water runs through them).

As fate would have it, just as I hauled a heavy sack of soil out of my car, the sky darkened and drops of moisture pattered the ground. I knew I had to work fast. I dragged the rain gutter in to the drain, stuffed the spout with some rags and propped up the other end with an unused pot so excess water could drain out the spout via gravity.

The pics explain it so much better than I can:

The rain gutter nestled in the drain by a patch of daikon radish, sayur putih (Chinese lettuce methinks?) and sayur raja (I have no idea what this is called in English)

This end is propped up with a pot with rocky clumps of soil. I prolly need to use something else in the future should I want to use the pot.

Spout/hole at the other end stuffed with rags.

After this, the next step is to add soil, compost etc. and leave to mature for a few days before transplanting. It seems that the simple drainage system is working.

I should really start sowing seeds but I've been so busy lately with a cat illness. My poor Yoruichi...