Letter to Julia 20110716

As for the house I live in now, it is far from ready for you. I have been focusing on the yard, but the interior still needs much work. The walls and window sills needs scraping and painting, the ceiling and roof need work, the bathrooms need work, the kitchen needs updating, there needs to be central air-conditioning installed, not to mention appropriate cat-proof furniture, etc etc etc. The yard takes a lot of my energy, as I hand-trim the grass, and am planting and tending more fruit and spice trees, and am constanly raking and burning. I barely have energy left to keep the insides tidy, and the spiders still rule the house. Then the outside needs painting too, and I'm still too poor to buy a can of paint. I dare not even let you look at the inside, I have to admit I have at least a few years left before I let you look at the interior.

I do enjoy the garden, though. The grass is long, because I don't use shears. But it only grows so high, so all I really need to do is remove the flower stems. The grass flowers are white and blue: one doesn't notice the blue unless one looks very closely. I also have many other white and blue flowers, but I don't know the name of the plant. I just help it spread and flourish. Among the grass are other white and blue flowers, some of them very tiny, and the balsam I sowed is finally growing and flowering, which coincidentally happen to be white and blue also. There are many curry leaf shrubs, but I had to prune most of them down because the quality was poor. There is a cashew and a mango tree up front, and I am adding more, along with some chilli plants, and a young bamboo of course, which will grow to be huge if I don't check it. I have an ancient fruit tree called an amra growing by the gate (which needs to be replaced). The fruit is a white, snappy, slightly sour flesh but it bears fruit all year long, and the skin tastes like it's packed with antioxidants. I also have a child of the amra which I keep in a flowerpot as a bonsai. There is a tropical cherry tree growing right beside the house. It's a very pretty tree, which gives a lot of shade, but only the songbirds can eat the fruit. There are some other shrubs with black stems and red fruits, I don't know what they are, but my Mom told me to keep them because the red fruits are high in vitamin C. Hmmm. But there is a large area of concrete where cars can park, so I don't have much space for more plants.

The back of the house is not so attractive, because the vegetation is immense. I'm doing what I can, but cleaning up the leaves is difficult, because of the preponderance of army ants. Yes ma'am, BIG red ants! If I dance around them then they leave me alone, but sometimes I need to hose down the concrete, and that makes them aggressive. There are 2 tall mango trees growing over the cesspool... I don't eat the fruit, but they do give out a wonderful scent during mango season. Beyond the cesspool is a ditch with a miniature swamp, which is someone else's property, so the back of the house needs to be bricked up. My grandfather's house is right beside mine, and it is abandoned, hence the thick vegetation. I would like to tackle that area eventually if I have the manpower, for there are many natural treasures there, but for now I have to focus on this house.

But the front yard is very quaint, and I barely got started, so I have great hopes in the future for a very pretty front yard. Ya Allah, I would like some money to start painting the house, and I would like to put a new roof, too. Plus many other things. Alhamdulillah. For now, I like to trim the grass on the evenings, and Chee Cheah is often at my side. My brother left his chickens here, so sometimes it's quite a soothing pastoral scene as I tend the garden. There is an elementary school just a few houses away. My mother's family has been in this for many generations, and it is a perfect place to raise a family.