Update on last week’s cauliflower story…
I forgot – we did have cauliflower again while living in Tari :)
After enjoying our cauliflower so much, we had someone from Australia either bring or send us some cauliflower seeds. Can’t remember how we ended up with a packet of cauliflower seeds, but we diligently prepared the garden and planted a row of seeds. Between the bugs and the rain, we ended up with about 6 plants that we tenderly cared for. They grew into big strong bushes, but to our great disappointment, we couldn’t see any heads. So out came the gardening book.
We discovered that cauliflowers needed a good frost to set the head. A frost…? We were living tropical, 5,000 feet up a mountain – where the temperature never got above 25 and never fell below 11 at night.
Our house helper, Byja, had been watching us in the garden, and he knew something was wrong. We tried to explain that there was no cauliflower head, but he’d never seen this food and didn’t understand. We showed him the picture in the gardening book, and using our limited language skills, managed to get through to him what the problem was. That’s when I suddenly had the bright idea of chipping ice from the huge freezer. We forgot about Bayja, and excitedly emptied the contents of the freezer all over the table, gathered tubs and buckets and started chipping.
Byja stood in the doorway, relaying our frenzied activities to some of the Huli workers, who then called out to others. By the time we came outside, there was quite a crowd gathering on the hill above our garden. As we began packing ice around the bushes, the giggles and animated discussion resounded in our ears. They thought we’d gone completely nuts!
My husband explained in broken Pidgin English why we were packing ice around our plants, and Byja translated to the spectators. This was greeted with disbelieving head shakes and much advice that Byja discreetly didn’t pass on.
Weeks later, to our delight, there were some tiny white heads forming. All six grew to about the size of large oranges. Guess who came to dinner when we picked them? See… persistence pays off. And where there’s a will, there’s a way!
DJ
(c) DJ Stutley 2012
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