We want to believe that the garden's gifts are always abundant and wanted. You know, dripping, ripe, green, lush and calming. Sorta like the image here....
In reality, it sometimes isn't. And that's what our last month in the garden was about. Despite my best efforts to be grateful, I found myself CURSING at yet more wretched jackfruits falling from the tree! 😜
This "small" one?? Haha.... 'only' 9.1kg. And it was one of 7 which fell from the tree - overripe and past eating - in one brief week.
Over 70kgs of fetid, fruit-fly-attracting MESS that I eventually hurled over the fence and into the irrigation canal beside our house. 😆 Probably I need to work out how to distil an enjoyable alcohol from all this sloppy, sweet, over-ripe fruit. Did I mention we don't really LIKE jackfruit?
For every person about to suggest using the meat from the young jackfruit for cooking? Check this....
That thick white liquid goo seeping out? Latex. Yup. As in a glue like substance. It gets on EVERYTHING and needs to be chiseled off your knives, benches, hands etc. Honestly, I can't be bothered. Which is a sign of how abundant and BLESSED we are that we can afford to ignore nourishing, garden abundance. I'm almost envious of the zucchini brigade cos I quite like zucchini bread!
In other excessive garden news, the aloe vera is going feral. So top-heavy that it's collapsing and needs to be cut & used, or composted.
When I get back from my current European travels, I'm planning to use it as a rooting hormone for propagating some new mulberry trees. And investigating freezing the pulp for smoothies. WE have literally hundreds of pups in various spots around the garden and in pots on the porch. The more I neglect it, the more it seems to thrive!
The banana trees are booming and we have 4 new little trees poking their way up - they're loving the monsoonal rains and it promises to be an abundant banana harvest too. 🤣 Lucky there are way more yummy things to make from a huge yield of bananas, than there are from jackfruits.
But basically, we're on the road for a month now in Europe.
The garden will do what it does in our absence, and when I come back I will no doubt be spending days and days with a machete to simply find my way in. 🤣 All good. Lucky I had the brush cutter serviced before we left, I'm gonna need it.
What I'm really appreciating is seeing how gardens are done here in Cyprus... and very much looking forward to observing some Dutch gardens when we hit The Netherlands next week.
Grateful for garden abundance, most of the time.... 😆
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