I don't know what's up with my biorhythms at the moment, but I seem to be rather accident prone. I managed to poke myself in the eye with a branch a while ago. It hurt like hell and I had a brightly bloodshot eye for several weeks. More recently, I burnt my hand while getting something out of the oven. And as a result of carelessly deseeding chillies yesterday, my fingers are now a lethal weapon whenever they come into contact with delicate areas of my anatomy. And to think only a couple of days ago, I was innocently listening to "Ring of Fire" by Johnny Cash, without the least intimation of what was to follow. True.
So I'm feeling in need of a little cheering up. Mauka, bless it, has provided me with a welcome late October fillip. Here it is, a mauka anthocarp, freshly harvested from the Blanca variety.
The plant itself looks to be undergoing a bad hair day of its own - it's a mass of straggling shoots with drooping (and dropping) yellow leaves; ornamental it is not - more like an oversize urchin gypsophila than anything else. But it is flowering gamely despite all this and even though I've abandoned my pollination attempts this year, it seems to be setting a crop of seeds nonetheless. I brought it indoors onto the same windowsill where my winged beans once stood, fearing frost would clobber it before its moment of glory. We've had some very mild frosts, but the other varieties, which I have left outside to their fate so far, are also flowering now; they show signs of swellings where swellings should be, from which I deduce that fertilisation has occurred. Mauka, I think I love you.
So I'm feeling in need of a little cheering up. Mauka, bless it, has provided me with a welcome late October fillip. Here it is, a mauka anthocarp, freshly harvested from the Blanca variety.
The plant itself looks to be undergoing a bad hair day of its own - it's a mass of straggling shoots with drooping (and dropping) yellow leaves; ornamental it is not - more like an oversize urchin gypsophila than anything else. But it is flowering gamely despite all this and even though I've abandoned my pollination attempts this year, it seems to be setting a crop of seeds nonetheless. I brought it indoors onto the same windowsill where my winged beans once stood, fearing frost would clobber it before its moment of glory. We've had some very mild frosts, but the other varieties, which I have left outside to their fate so far, are also flowering now; they show signs of swellings where swellings should be, from which I deduce that fertilisation has occurred. Mauka, I think I love you.
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