Gardening

Part of my holiday agenda is to work in my garden and to grow some veges.  My parents live in the house since day one which was about two and half years ago.  My mother grows two longan trees in the garden.  They are doing extremely well.  She also grows passion fruits, cestrum nocturnum (夜来香), aloe vera, calamansi and leonurus heterophyllus (益母草).

This is one of the longan trees.  The tree is not tall but produces lots of longans, at least twice a year.  The longans are big and sweet.

I cut a branch of longan yesterday morning.  They taste really sweet.  Sometimes the bigger ones are not as nice as the smaller ones because the seeds for the bigger ones are also big.

This is one of the big ones.  Sweet but the seed is also quite big.

This is how big the seed is.

On the same branch, we get different sizes of longan.  The best ones are the ones with small seeds.

Calamansi tree.  The fruits are not doing very well now.  They are very dark in colour.  I think maybe it is because there are too much weed around the tree.  I tried to clear the weed since I came back but it is raining everyday and I couldn't do much.

This is aloe vera.  There are lots of babies all stuck together.  I need to clear the weed and spread the plant properly.

This is cestrum nocturnum (夜来香).  The flowers or the buds are what we eat from the plant.  My grandmother liked to cook these for us to eat when I was young.  So when my mother started growing veges in the garden, I requested her to grow this because I haven't eaten these for a long long time.  My mom couldn't find the plant anywhere.  Then a friend told me that her mother has in it in her garden.  So she asked her mother to gave a plant to my mother.  Now the plant is doing very well in my garden and it has also multiplied.

We cook the flowers in soup, Chinese style.  My mom will make pork soup and when the soup is nearly ready, add the flowers or buds in the soup.  The soup has very nice fragrance and taste very sweet.  It is supposed to be good for our eyes and vision.