I have two winter melons in my garden. I am so happy. So far this year, I have already harvested two winter melons from my garden. I am glad that at least, I have some vegetables growing my garden. Winter melons are widely used in Chinese cuisine; they are either stir-fried or combined with pork or pork/beef bones to make winter melon soup. Winter melon candy is also eaten during festivals or used as fillings for mooncakes during the Mooncake Festival.
I had bought winter melons from the MBKS Stutong Community Market at Jalan Setia Raja, saved the seeds and planted them. It is not easy to grow winter melons. I threw hundreds of seeds into the ground and only one plant grew this year.
Last year, I also threw hundreds of the seeds into the ground and only one plant grew as well. I do not eat all the winter melons I grow. After all, no matter how nutritious it is, how many bowls of winter melon soup can a family consume in a day or a week? Although it is reputed to be good for health, you can get tired of winter melon soup.
So I usually give away all the winter melons my family cannot eat to friends. Recently, I sent one by bus to my best friend in Sibu, which is 401.64 kms away from Kuching. Her response on receiving it was “Wah, so big!” That comment made my day. I gave another fruit to my son’s friend and the next day, she sent me a picture through WhatsApp of the winter melon soup her mother cooked Her response encouraged me to plant more winter melons.
Those who have been following my column will know that I am a part-time gardener. While many neighbours in in my housing estate have cemented their backyards, I have not. My backyard garden, at a glance, looks wild. Recently, I sent to my best friend through WhatsApp a picture of part of my garden. In that part of the garden, I have chilli, mulberry, pandan (screwpine) and lime plants; all are thriving well in terracotta pots or plastic boxes. I also have serai (lemon grass), terong asam (sour eggplant) and sugar cane plants growing on the ground.
My friend’s comment when she saw the picture of my garden was “ You have a terrific garden!” That comment, again, made my day. Sometimes, I wish I have a bigger garden to grow all sorts of vegetables. I get a lot of tips on gardening from Youtube and the Internet. On my days off, if I am not window shopping or visiting my relatives and friends, I spend a lot of time in the garden. Maintaining a garden is hard work. The grasses have to weeded and they grow fast when there is plenty of rainfall. Dead leaves have to be removed and branches pruned. At one time, I was very tanned because I spent many hours in the garden under the sun.
The thing with weeding and pruning is you don’t want to stop until you have completed what you set out to do. Sometimes, when I am still in the garden as the raindrops fall, my mother will call out to me:”Come in, come in. It is raining.”
Apparently, in the eyes of the old lady, I am forever young and must be told not to play in the rain. Very often, I put all the grasses I have pulled out and the leaves and branches I have trimmed into plastic bags, ready to be taken away by the garbage men the next day. One of my colleagues, who is a good gardener and owns many durian, rambutan and langsat trees, suggests I recycle the grasses, leaves and branches by putting them in big containers of water.
“After the grasses and leaves have composted, you can use the water to water your plants,“ he says. He tells me that soil, which is burnt on top of branches, makes good fertilizers, too. I thank him for his suggestions which I will definitely try. Previously, I used to spend a lot of money buying fertilisers for my garden. Now, I use the water for washing rice, fish and meat to water the plants. I also keep the skins of fruits, especially bananas and use them as fertilisers.
With the high prices of papayas in the market, I have tried to plant my own papayas but without any success so far. The plants grow to a certain height and then just die away. “it is probably your soil,” commented a friend. In my housing estate, someone has successfully grown, on land by the road outside his house, papaya plants that bear fruits when they are just about two feet tall.
I envy the unknown gardener each time I pass by the plants and wonder what is the secret to his success. I have also tried to grow big chillies but again without any success at all.
But I have a few thriving chilli plants that bear small, thumb size fruits. I store these chillies in the freezer after harvesting them. Recently, I made some Nasi Lemak Sambal with these homegrown chillies and dried chillies I bought from the supermarket. Nasi Lemak is a Malay fragrant rice dish cooked in coconut milk while the sambal is the hot spicy sauce that goes with the dish. When I passed some of the sambal to my son’s f r iend, she messaged me through the WhatsApp: “Your sambal is hot.
Please grow more chillies.” When I receive bountiful harvests from the garden, I thank God for them. I believe straight from my heart that if He had not blessed my garden, nothing would have grown well in it. Because I believe what I have in the garden comes from God, I look forward to sharing my harvests with my friends and relatives.
I only discover the joys of gardening a few years ago. Before that, I rarely stepped into the backyard where very few things grew. My mother is no gardener at all. Whatever we had grew accidentally grew by themselves. Now, all the plants and flowers in my garden do not grow accidentally; I plant them from seeds or cuttings.
When I was growing up, I spent most of my holidays with my grandparents in Kanowit. Many days would be spent with them in their pepper garden and farm house. Although I enjoyed the idyllic lifestyle, I had no interest in gardening then. Ga r d e n i n g i s a f o rm o f therapy for me. On my days off, I look forward to toiling i n my g a rd e n .
Af t e r s l o g – ging in front of the computer for many long hours, I look f o rwa rd t o s ome p hy s i c a l exercise and heavy sweating under the sun. To know that one of my passion fruit plants is blooming puts a smile on my face today. Gardening is just one of my many hobbies in life. What about you, my friends?
