Sunday, November 14, 2010

Blue Sky at Night, Fisherman's Friend

Poverty has struck once again but the constant gardener is undeterred. My aim in life is to have a better ginger garden than the smoking area at Changi Airport. The groundwork has been well and truly laid with this 80-baht banana from Jatujak:


And this 60-baht ginger and her sisters, which attract a tiny species of wasp (click to see it horribly enlarged):


The walls will by and by be convered in teen thook kae or lizard's feet. I ordered 10 near Jatujak last week after my visa renewal ordeal at the mad government complex in Laksi, and then when I made my way back through the heat and smog on Saturday they'd forgotted to get them. I went home dejected but just on the off-chance asked the garden centre 100 m from the house, and they said sure, we've got plenty, 20 baht a pop. Sometimes there simply aren't the words:


From Tom and Mam come a couple of frangipani, which are branches that their landlady's factotum ripped off the trees (with his teeth, it looked like) and put in water. That corpse you planted last year in your garden, has it begun to sprout? Indeed it has:


I'll plant a banyan tree in the bottom right-hand corner in due course, they root in anything; it may over the years bust that hideous wall, but they tend to be holy so there's nothing the neighbours can do but grit their teeth and worship. A sea almond tree in the other corner, I think, they also root in any ground no matter how stony.

Leo and Cheetah don't care one way or the other: