Our "Nana" Has Transformed!

One afternoon a few months ago I was looking after Zaqwan (he was just over a year and a half then). We were passing by the kitchen area when suddenly he cried: "Nana, nana..."

"Uh oh"...I said to myself, this may spell trouble. You see, Zaqwan's mom is known to us as Nana. 

Zaqwan must have suddenly missed his mother and wanted me to send him to her!

"Mummy's at work" I said trying to pacify him. "We'll see her in the evening, ok".

"Nana, nana..." Zaqwan persisted

 I was trying hard to avoid having to send him to his mom. It wouldn't have worked anyway. First I didn't have his car seat with me. Secondly I didn't think Nana fancied (to put it mildly) the idea of a baby and a white-haired oldy suddenly appearing at her office! No can do.




"Nana, nana" Zaqwan went on,


this time his finger pointed to a bunch of bananas hanging on the wall.

"Oh, I see..."  "Phew...!"


This post is about our banana tree. (I would of course need a permission, probably in writing, before I even think about writing something on Nana, the mother ;)

You may recall this photo of the banana tree we have at The Farm. Looks healthy, right.

This is the rastali variety. The mother (or rather baby) tree was given to us by Aunt Sophie some three to four months ago. She gave us a seedling of less than a foot tall. She must be proud to learn how her little baby has grown into a fine young lady.

Aunt Sophie lives in an apartment a few storeys above ground level. But her love for gardening didn't stop her from looking after some banana trees at ground level. Until one day the management told her that the bananas had to go. Residents had been complaining.

Aunt Sophie came to us and ask if we were willing to adopt one of the bananas. We were glad to. So we transported the seedling to The Farm with Aunt Sophie tagging along. She even chose the spot where she (the banana) should be planted.

The tree had shown good progress in the first few months. Until recently, that is. I noticed her new frond had shrunk to a third its usual length - just over a foot, from the usual 6-8 feet (I'm old school, still stuck with the Imperial - that would be about 2 to two and a half metres).

New frond in the middle

The young lady had stopped growing! Vegetatively, that is. She is now transforming herself, getting ready for motherhood.

The next day I noticed her jantung or 'the heart' protruding from where new fronds would normally emerge. I watched with complete awe another wonder of nature. "Here is another fruit of my labour" I thought, quite pleased with myself. My tender loving care had not gone unrewarded after all.

She continued with her transformation, the heart becoming longer and had bent down slightly due to its weight.

The 'Heart' squeezing itself out pushing
aside the new frond

Then,..... KKKK...RRRRR...EEEE..OOOOKKK, tub..tub..tub.. it burst open

I can't wait to tell Aunt Sophie the good news.


To be continued....

I am a Star?

Hi everyone, my intended post has been passed over for a fantastic piece of news which I just received:


Star Blogger Theres Just Life wants me to join her in Bloggers' Hall of Fame!

She had been bestowed the award by Denise at L'Aussie Writing. What I'll have to do though is write about my writing style and habit, and pass the star to some other bloggers.

Thanks for having me in mind, PJ. It is my pleasure to do both, with or without the award.

I first signed up with Blogger three years ago when living in Perth, Western Australia. I thought being retired I would have plenty of time to write. Well, I thought wrong. I had plenty of time alright, but apart from cooking and looking after son number three (yes the one with the orange hair!)  the rest of my time was spent cycling (and fishing) around Perth and enjoying the whole of Western Australia and other territories.

Needless to say the blog never took off. It remained dormant. When I returned to Malaysia and rehabilitated the farm land that I had bought some eight years ago (it had turned into a secondary jungle then), it occured to me that I now would have more time on my hands in between farm jobs to do some writing. This time I was right.

So last month I started this blog. Frankly I was worried that it'll suffer the same fate as the first one - still born - or I would be hit by the writers' block and would stop writing after a couple of entries. As it turned out, I wrote and wrote and surprised myself with seventeen entries in the first month!

I was of course encouraged by those visiting my blog and gave what I thought were their true and honest feelings about what I wrote.

What I write about: In my case I was very clear of what I will NOT write about, and that is socio-political issues. The reason being I am apolitical, and if I were to do a socio-political blog I would have to pass judgement and be critical of certain individuals, or the government, etc. I am just not into that kind of thing.

If there's an advice that I am to give would-be bloggers, it is this: blog what you are passionate about. Something that you will never get tired of writing, discussing and sharing. In this way you won't really be concerned about whether people read your blog or not. After all it is simply a matter of keeping a diary of your daily activities, which some of us do anyway, even without putting it into a blog.

But the blogsphere is a wonderful place. You will soon realise that there are indeed people with the same interests as you, and they will pay you visits and make a comment or two. And this, as I said earlier, is great encouragement.

My writing habit and style: I write spontaneously. As I like anybody or anything with a sense of humour, I tend to inject some in my writing. They are sprinkled with a little drama, even out of the most mundane of topics and situations!

In most cases the subject matter just hit me out of nowhere (often while I am in the middle of doing some work totally unrelated to writing itself). I would then capture not only the ideas but right down to the actual phrases that I was going to use, and kept them in my head. Of course some of them would be lost as it normally took me a few days between being hit (or inspired, as some would call it) and the actual writing, but so far I have been able to retain most of them.

Once I get access to a computer and the internet I just start writing on that topic. No drafting, no jotting down anything. I edit as I go along. I must admit I am a stickler for grammer and spelling!

What I write about: My first love is my family. But I am passionate about growing trees and rearing animals. So rather than writing about agriculture or agronomy per se, which can be rather boring, I find myself linking the two. And because I am so very fond of children and feel very connected to them, you will find children featuring prominently in my writing. That perhaps also explain the Aesop fable approach in some.

Now for the difficult but pleasurable task of listing blogs that I follow. Before that I must state here that since I am new at blogging where I started browsing for blogs I like not so long ago, I am sure there are many many more wonderful blogs with similar interest out there which I had not got the pleasure and fortune of discovering.

Also, I follow a great number of blogs, including by Artists, as Art is another subject which I am attracted to.

For this purpose however I shall limit myself to blogs with farming and nature theme. So here goes:

(I sincerely hope the following will accept the award, tell us about their writing style/habit, and in turn nominate blogs of their choice - thanks!)

http://bimbimbie.blogspot.com/  You'll find her nestled amongst tall Gum and flowering Banksia trees. Great photos of birds

http://kellesneverdonefarm.blogspot.com/  for the simple and frugal life - the way I like it!

http://thechicken-wrangler.blogspot.com/ where you'll get to learn all about chicken rearing

http://operationhomestead.blogspot.com/  for more farm stories involving goats, ducks and yes, chickens!

http://adventuresinthegoodland.blogspot.com/ more adventures and nice scenery here!

http://akelamalu.blogspot.com/ Head to Lancashire U.K for some delightful fictions

There you have it, PJ. Here's to you...

Photophobia

When I bought my Canon I was determined to keep track of Zaqwan growing up on a weekly basis, or monthly at the very least, knowing how fast kids grow and the behavioral changes that come with it. I have not been able to do that with Irfan as I don't see him often enough. Besides, Irfan's mama had already chronicled his development on an almost daily basis since his birth, in her blog, so I can always go back to that.

Zaqwan has been ok with the camera as you may have noticed from earlier photoshoots. But this has changed lately.

He seems to be extremely camera shy. He resents the camera being pointed at him and would make his displeasure quite clear for everyone to see.

One evening at break fast (as opposed to one morning at breakfast), he sat on his baby chair at the dining table with us. While waiting for his food to be served he put his right hand to his chin in a termenung  (deep thought) pose, but with a smile on his face.

On seeing this Grandma got excited and went: " the camera! the camera! quickly!"

By the time I came down with the camera Zaqwan's deep and pleasant thoughts had changed to - how to describe it - bored and lazy thoughts may be . And he didn't like the presence of the camera at all:

OK that's enough!

The transformation of nana.....next

A 'Papan' A Day

One 'Papan'

First let me clear the term 'papan': It is an article (penjodoh bilangan in Malay) - like a herd of cattle, a cup of coffee, a flock of chickens - you get my drift (in Malay e.g se ekor lembu, sehelai kain, sebiji mangga - faham la tu) to describe one string of this bean called Petai- only this bean, no other beans carry the article 'papan'. Don't ask me why this is so. May be the DBP -'Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka' - our linguistic authority can explain.

Anyway, deep in the jungles surrounding The Farm you'll find Petai trees growing, matured trees some 30 metres tall. So it is quite tough to get to the fruits. Climbers have died from falling down the petai trees.

Botanists and plant scientists would know petai as Parkia speciosa, a leguminous plant. They are also known, in various countries in the Far East, as bitter bean, sataw, twisted cluster bean, yongchaa, yongchaak, zawngtah or stink bean.

 

In the centre of these photos, extending high beyond the bamboo and other

tall trees, you can see the light green branches of the Petai tree

A young Petai tree - not unlike The Flame of the Forest

Petai seedling just planted

'Orang Asli' or the indeginous people selling Petai

They are sold in a bunch of 100  'papan'

Petai is very popular amongst Asians. Only the bean inside is eaten, either raw, or  pickled, or cooked into a 'sambal' - by frying with a paste consisting of blended or pestel and mortar-pounded shallots, garlic, dried chillies and tamarind juice (salt and sugar to taste).

The petai beans

What is left of the skin after the
beans have been taken out

Sambal Petai

Apart from being a fantastic appetizer due to its exotic taste and crunchiness, and the added heat if turned into a sambal, petai is known as a cure for and prevention of diabetes.

That's what I thought, until I discovered a university professor's research findings. Professor Madia Dr.Aminuddin AHK of the Dept.of Physiology Medical faculty of UKM (University Kebangsaan Malaysia) conducted various studies and his research has proven petai's effectiveness as a cure for many other human ailments such as depression and PMS.

You can read his entire findings here. You will be amazed.

Dr Aminuddin compared apple and petai and concluded that eating a papan a day is better at keeping the doctor away.

Conversation With S

It was a very hot day. I was squatting down mending the fence. A section had been torn by some wild  animals, I suspect the wild boar. Ideally I should concrete the whole stretch, holding the wire mesh down. But I have no energy to do the sand-cement mix and to wheel-barrow the whole mixture down, or up in this case. It needs somebody half my age to do it.

As a temporary measure I use logs to put accross the length of the hole and nail down the end of the wire fencing into it. It works, until the wood rots or some strong beast rip it apart.

Now that the fruit season is over I am not so worried about animals coming in. I am more worried about Ella (the Rottweiler) going out and terrorize the villagers.

"It's a hot day, isn't it?"  he appeared out of nowhere, as usual, breathing down my neck (literally and figuratively). "Yes, it is very hot"  I responded, not bothering to look back, continuing with my pulling the wire and hammering, sweat dripping down my face and neck, my skinny and almost black arm swinging the hammer as hard as I could.

"Why are you doing this alone?" he continued, in a kay-poh-chi (busybody) way.

"Why not?" I asked back.

"Why not ask your children to help, so you can finish this whole place in double quick time". 

"Triple quick"  I found myself reluctantly entertaining him.

"How's that?"

"I have three boys"

"There you go. Why not ask them to come and lend their poor father a hand"

"I'm not poor"

"You know what I mean"

"They are all busy"

"Even on week-ends?"

"Look, they have got families, ok. They have other things to do", I shot back, becoming irritated now.

"Defending them now, issit?"

"Why are you talking like a Malaysian, now?"

"I am Malaysian. And I read Patrick Teoh's blog a lot. Anyway, you are defending them, aren't you?"

"Of course. They are not here to defend themselves"

"What about number 3?"

"I'm sorry?"

"Your third son, the tall one, the one with the orange hair"

"Green"

"Sometimes orange, sometimes green".

"What about him?"

"Why is he not helping you?" 

"Why don't you ask him" I thought that would be the easiest way out. I refused to offer any more excuses.

"Now it's one o'clock"

"So?"

"You must be hungry from all this laborious work. What about your makan minum (meals), who takes care of that?"

"Don't go there"

"Why not?"

"DON'T!"  I decided to do a Homer Simpson, hoping that he'll go away.

"Mano tuko??"

I looked up and there was Aziz, my younger brother and week-end helper staring down at me, asking for the hammer.

By the look on his face  he knew that he must have startled the whit out of me.