Tuesday 18 November 2008

Peeking At Pika

Tuesday (both 4 and 11 November)
You can take the girl out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the girl...after 40 years plus of city living, Mum showed she is still a country girl at heart by her appreciation and enjoyment of the Guadeloupean countryside - aka Pika!
We had two lovely mornings there and I think she tasted pretty much everything growing, and photographed almost every plant! Well, perhaps not quite....! So here are some selected highlights. (I have planned a separate post for the plants so I haven't included those here. They will come one of these days!)
Mum enjoying some sugar cane - chew, suck and spit it out! And a cuddle with her favourite Baby JoJo
Grandma and Papy in the midst of a tour of the newly ploughed field. This is the close up shot for Evs!
This is a rare one of Papy smiling - usually he looks sooo solemn!
A tender moment between Papy and Baby JoJo
I told you recently about the tractor ploughing the field and here it is in action. The part on the far left of the picture is Bertie's section and he went shopping at a garden centre last week for tomatoes, parsley and lettuce which he then hurriedly planted on Saturday. Why hurriedly? Because here they are great believers in planting according to the moon's cycle (which I referred to here) and as it was the full moon that weekend, that was the time to do it! I looked up a few websites about this, and various farmers testified to the validity of this claim, that their plants grew much more when planted as the moon waxed rather than when it waned.
The other "Gwada myth" Papy has shared with me is that women shouldn't touch certain trees at that time of the month. These include the avocado tree, lemon tree, orange tree and cherry tree, which he termed fragile, but not the goyave tree, mango tree or star fruit tree! I asked what would happen and he said that the tree would dry up and die... Having previously scoffed at this, I googled it and discovered research done many years ago suggested women had a toxic effect on plants and animals during this time if they touched them....any thoughts?!
Father and son hard at work!
Bertie's sister in France kindly sent over a swing I think she found in a garage sale (here, passing an item to someone coming over is a common postal method!). Bertie put it up on the manguier and it is a big improvement on the plank of wood previously used!
As you can imagine, the girls are thrilled with this new toy! Their favourite activity is when they get twisted round and round and round and then left to SPIIIIIIIN!
Mamie has a separate plot of land where she is mainly harvesting sweet potatoes at the moment. When I see them all hard at work in the boiling sun, digging and hoeing, and getting rid of all those weeds that the constant rain produces, it reminds me how much I admire those who work the land to produce the vital crops for us all. When I see her hat however, it reminds me of one worn by our friend Samson!
Sisterly love!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I just loved the colour and texture of that soil - its so 'friable' - whatever that means!

Oh yes I nearly forgot
'abreuve nos sillons'!