In and Around No 43

A secondary school was in the neighbourhood - with its entrance less than 100 metre from our house. The school gate was seldom locked and even if it did - climbing over the 7 foot tall gate posed no problem. The gate opened into a gravel road flanked one one side by tall causarina trees which always attracting black beetles and adjacent to it was a wide open field. In 'drier' period the ground there hard and it was real fun to run 'amok' in the empty field in the cooling late evening or to collect the freshly mowed grass and layered them to form a thick bed of grass to 'trample' on or lying down and watching the blue blue sky and smell the earth. We used rectangular boards as high-speed 'frisbees' - we flung them at great force and watched them slicing through the air and soared to great height and eventually ended up on the opposite ends of the field. The field was mostly empty on weekends - we had the whole field to ourselves. The drainage out of the school was bad - as a result the concrete drains outside the classes and the basketball court often got flooded. Water stayed literally for weeks resulting in the best breeding grounds for water-borne insects and creatures - water spider, jelly-sticky frog - eggs , tadpoles in various stages of growth , cicada-like nymphs etc - a truely naturalist paradise for those who care to investigate. The school was surrounded by marshlands where water buffaloos roamed and 'water-bird' waded through muddy water infested with unseen leeches. Pockets of Simpoh ( the broad leaves were once used for wrapping toufo) , isolated seven candles with orange candle-like flowers, sendudok flashed pink/purplish flowers and panduan screwpines with bright orange red 'pineapple-like' fruits dotted landscape. I remembered we had encountered one huge lizard ( not monitor-lizard) size of a adult croc. In front of the gate were a desiel powered oil derrick which was connected to other passive oil derrick via inch thick cables. Nearby were rows of huge sedimentation tanks - for separating sand from the raw crude oil. Whenever oil wells were found, the crude oil formed a hard crust no plants life can strive for years. It was the same well that had caught fire on day.. I could see the thick black smoke some kilometers from my primary school not knowing then it was so close to my home.

touch feel and listen to them

I spent a sizeable time with plants in my old house. They gave me hours of relaxation and entertainment. In the evening hours I linkered with the 7 foot tall indian corns - feeling the silky combs, watching the wavering and the beatings of the long grass-like blades in wind, or run my palm through the leaves of the tomato plants and quickly smell the lingering fresh aroma. On other time on the lookout of green grasshopper perching on leaves or fence-post and try to catch bare-hand. ( you need to be swift and accurate, holding down of the insect at thorax and ignored the kick of the barbed hindlegs, they hurted a bit but not much. And aoid the mouth parts - they nibbled) Or squatting down inspecting the rows of sprouting spring onions in a raised wooden box and picked off the invading garden snails and watched them literally dissolves under NaCl - table salts . Or do a 'simulated rain' by shaking lightly the chempaka tree trunk shortly after rain and see how fast can i run away from it. Or peeping into the clear pockets of water collected in the pineapple leaves or watching ants rebuilding their nests after the ' flood'. Weeds and tiny plants had beautify of their own. I came to know them by their appearance - tiny fruits / flowers / leaves arrangment and noted which one oozes white latex when cut. While dad concentrated in growing vegetables ( eg chilly, tomatoes, brinjals, ladies finger, bittergourd, melon, long beans, corns, sugar canes, pandan leaves, lemon grass, ginger, lime etc) my contribution was little - a cactus, and a low carpetting plants with colorful tiny flowers.

Under the Cherry Tree

The Indian cherry tree or Muntingia calabura at the backyard was one of the largest one i had ever seen. It was more than 2 stories in height and its canopy covered most of the narrower end of wedge-shaped backyard- a much need shelter from the scorching afternoon sun . The fruits were larger than usual - ripening from green to yellow to red and deep red and imaging the whole trees fulled of them attracting birds during days and high-pitch sound fruit bats at night. For me I enjoyed eating the berries whole- skin and all. For some reasons this 'cherry' had never made it to the commercial status. Under this marvellous tree, my dad reared ducks and chicken. The chicks and ducklings were first bought from market and at night we kept them in carton boxes in the living room, warmed up with a kerosene lamp with wick turned low ( away from predators like cats / dogs /rats / cockroaches etc) . Dad had to change the soiled newspaper linings often to keep them dry and clean. By night fall as if by instinct they all fallen asleep and not a sound was heard. When they grew a bit older they were let out to roam fenced-in under the cherry tree. Nearby in our kitchen - one of the gas stoves at the floor level was reserved for the daily boiling of the husks ( chicken-feed) mixed with tiny fishes that dad bought cheaply from fishmongers. I remembered the rectangular cooking oil container, the wooden spatula, and the sight of my kittens cuddled around this stove for warm on raining days.

No 43 - Trees ..contd

The weeping willow tree came much later and was planted near the front entrance. Relatively young, the bark was light green and smooth but offered little shade and a certain portion of the stems quickly showed sign of 'cut-and-bruises' - result of the constant banging against the fully open gate. I was told i have better 'luck' than others in propagating willow from cut-stem. The procedure was simple: loosened some soil, and impaled the 3 foot stem at 60-70 degree at depth of 4-6 inches. Watered them and watch them sprouting young leaves. My neighbour opposite our house had a fully grown tree from one of my earlier transplants.

My grandparents presented us two chempaka (MAGNOLIACEAE) in wide-mouth urns. We planted them in the front courtyard. Both the orange and white chempaca were some of the strongest scented flowers i had come across. However my mum said she felt they gave her a fainting spell. When the trees flowered, they were normally found high up in the branches but I could detect their unique aroma wafted in the cool night breeze especially after an downpour when i took a study break. Apart from the flowers which i had studied, the trees I noticed also bore strange or ugly grape- like bunches of berries each with seeds inside. At that time i was thinking why a tree with such elegant flowers form bore such ugly fruits.

No 43 - Trees

When my dad acquired this house in the 60s from the owner, there were only two sizeable fruit trees - a starfruit tree in the middle of the front court yard and a tall, large indian cherry tree at the back. The star fruit tree was with us for a couple of years and its branches heavily trimmed. Soon new branches emerged and flowered - the tiny red flowers attacting bees and dews /waterdrops 'sparkled' after overnight rain and against morning rays from the sun. But too bad the star fruits were small ,bitter-tasted and sour so my dad decided to chop it down. The deep-rooted stump remained and was the site of many after-dinner plaything. I hollowed the soil around the root-system, collected twigs and branches and fueled the fire with papers from our study wastspaper basket. The smoke had kept the swarms of mosquitoes away for nights. Soon the stump turned into ashes, the ground was leveled and a buah 'longlong*' ( my mum called this buah gunong* perhaps a mis-pronounciation of the kedongdong ) seedling was planted some distance away. Years passed and the kedongdong (Golden apple, Hog-plum, Otaheite Apple) or Spondias cytherea tree became a landmark. At its prime the buah longlong fruits were so plentiful that i remembered guni-sacks after guni-sacks of the mature green fruits were harvested using a bamboo pole ( but fetched dirt-cheap $). Some like to eat it pickled in vinegar/cherry, some like to eat it freshly sliced and sprinkled with plume salt and with dark- soy sauce/cherry. I liked mine fully ripened - soft, and sweet( taste a bit like a cross of ripe pineapple and mango) inside. The fruit contains a single stone with fibre radiating outwards.

A 'thud' sound in the quiet of the night meant another mature buah kedongdong fruit to be picked the next day. This tree had 'accompanied' me through the schooling years : my primary, secondary and even after my graduation. During my secondary day, i have brought a fruit to show to my American Science Teacher (Peace-Corp) - he thought it was some sort of a plum ( he was quite right as this fruit was nicknamed Hog-Plum) . This landmark tree had bore witnesses to snarl numerous passing 'kites' that had fallen out of the sky as losers of kite-fighting competition and kids were fighting to be the first to get to the fallen trophies . The tree had also offered temporary refuge of a frighten cat from my a pursuing dog and in peaceful time - a tree-climbing target for some of my cats ( I had a dozen cats and two dogs before).

No 43 - climbers

Lily Ho's post of a climber/vine with lovely clusters of pinkish small flowers and heart-shape leaf brought back memories of plants in my old house in Borneo. Near the entrance, clinging on the shared fence with my neighbour thrived the same plant species. This sun loving vine - coral vine or Antigonon leptopus plant was hardy and had survived numerous attempts to uproot and destroyed it - it kept bouncing back. I had to admit they were quite pretty at time ( reaching out from the fence) attracting bees and insects but the dried shriveled leaves between 'double' fences were an eye-sore and hard to get to. I thought it was a nuisance weed so to get rid of the dried leaves i ever set fire on it and watched the flames leaping high, like a fast-fuse of a dynamiteh and nearly burn-down my neighbour precious rambutan tree. Luckily the flame extinguished itself without leaving too much evidence of my mis-calculation. One fine afernoon i decided to 'trace' origin of the vine and had to dug more than 1 foot deep to reveal the bulbous hard tuber not knowing that the tuber is edible. After tending to the bed of sweet-potatoes, i built a fire and remembered roasting this unique tuber on the shallow pit - at least it smell pleasant.

Nearby sharing the same fence and on the other fences as well were another climber, gloriosa superba or flame lily - the leaf tips ended with tendrils and the unique spider-like crimson /yellow petals were pretty eye- catching. IDing this marvelous plant from botany book was not difficult. This was perhaps one of the few flowers that i plucked and examined in details under my dad's magnifyng glass at the seeds attachment of sectioned fruit segments. Well this plant had succulent but posionous tuber in fact all parts of this plant are poisonous if ingested. The smeshed tuber had a whiteish juice and sharp 'bitter green' smell. The other closely inspected flowers include the trumpet-shaped morning glory the commonest fence crawler. In fact the other perimeters of the house were dominated by this 'weed'.

The other climber was 'winter-melon' or Tung Qua. The stems were covered with prickly stiff hairs and 'hollow' like a straw inside. Leaves were broad and equally hairy. If you slice off the stems you can literally observe water oozes out of the wound. Under the tender care of my dad, they grew fast, covering the entire frontal fences in no time. My dad also taught me how to do artificial cross-pollination by rubbing the pollens from a male flower to the female stigma. ( I saw him applying the same procedure to the papaya tree) Following a successful pollination, the yellow female flower dropped off leaving a growing fruit. Melons can grow to huge size and the skin was light green with whitish powder. A single climber can yield up to 10-20 melons each weighing >20 kg(?). I remembered we gave to our neighbours and sold off the excess even thought it did not fetch any good price. Our fence was permanently deformed or sagged as a result of the weight of tens-twenties melons.