Grand Election Week Harvest

We have been staying with my parent in-laws for several days for the grand election at East Coast Malaysia. So the garden has to fend for themselves. We don't have to worry much about watering the plants because almost every day this week the plants received some showers from mother nature almost every afternoon. Due to the rain I have to check on the mulberry plants often as some time during heavy rain the fruits fell from the tree before it turns fully ripe. But Rayyan seems to like sweet sourish fruit so he does not mind even if the mulberry has not turn blackish red in colour. One of the patch that was overgrown with weeds after clearing up salvaged some Asian greens like kailan to harvest. Basil plants are very at the overgrown stage, plenty of pestos can be made from them. We usually harvest them right before we need some basil leaves while cooking.

 This month of May will be the month for hard pruning for some big fruits trees in the garden at the back before we enter hot and dry season. Last week, hubby managed to give a hard-pruning to one very old tall mango tree. Some of the fruits are not reachable even using a long bamboo stick to poke the fruits so they fall. Hubby has to climb the mango tree using a ladder and stand on the tree to chop many branches. After most of the branches were chopped off, Ilhan and Rayyan helped his father to collect the fruits on the chopped branches before their father disposed the chopped branches. The mango tree bears small egg size mango fruits type which commonly used to make pickle when the fruits are young green. I hope my mother will be happy when she returned for a few days next week to see the mango tree has been pruned. She used to prune the mango tree until almost 2 years ago she fell from that mango tree from a high position. From the accident unfortunately she can't moved or used much of her left arm to lift things and has to meet up regularly with physiotherapist. She will celebrate her 60th birthday at the end of this year, so with age will take time to recover and doctor said she exceed her limits using her arm muscles to do stuff. Nope not listening, she still do a lot of hard-pruning (more like whacking) with her right arm each time she returned when she sees her plants competing with light again because I had to pretend not seeing them growing robustly (excuses busy with the 3 kids again). To be honest, looking after an acre land including the house, the TV is hardly switch on. We even had a period where the TV was not switch on at all more than a week. 

 Alternate days through month of May, pea eggplants, bird-eyes chillies, snake beans, calamansi limes and butterfly peas are available to harvest.

 Pattypan squashes has also started to produce. But I am so clumsy each time when I touched them to help with the pollination I broke the stem. Not just pattypan squash but also other squashes growing in the garden.

A few chicken and duck eggs.

Harvest Monday.