My Gardening Pedigree ---- You think its a joke?

By Razaque Ahamat

You may wonder what I am on about??. I do have a gardening knack that goes back a very, very long time.

After my parents got married in the late 30's and after my eldest brother came on to the scene, they realised that there was 'a lack of elbow room' in living in Colombo. With my Dad's savings and the dowry that he got, they could hardly have acquired a tenement lodgings in Colombo!! Luckily my Mum got compensation for a property that was given to her as a wedding gift by my Grand parents that was gobbled up for road development!! Along with all these assets put together, they bought about 11/2 acres of land in Wattala and built their homestead there. That was how our family happened to be in Wattala!!.

I came into the scene much later when they had already started our campaign to grow. Already there were several mango, varieties of banana, coconut, jak, del trees laden, for a starter, on the road to self sufficiency!! Later my dad bought a few acres of paddy land ---- and we had our rice too...... country rice at that!! We all had to lend our hands & get them soiled in the process from a very young age. We really enjoyed the romance of this toil to the consternation of our relatives who at first called us "The Villagers".... Gamayas and so on & laughed at us!!! One wonders who had the last laugh??? In addition, we grew a variety of local vegies ---" Gam Elavalu" such as bandakka, wattakka, pathola, mannochchka,  kiri-ala, bathala (what the Antipodes call Kumara!!). We were flushed with all these goodies so much so that our relatives came to visit us dangling their hand (and 'everything else'), but left laden with produce from our land hardly able to carry them and of course forgetting all their slur ...quite unashamedly!!

One more thing was that as we were supplied with watered-down milk by the local milkman, Dad got two cows that provided us with 'real' milk -- and lots of it. We all learned to milk the cows and look after them and their calves. One upshot from this was that yours truly became very adept at "HANDLING UDDERS" !!!!!.

We also had a lot of poultry -- chicken, ducks and turkey and several dogs & cats that gave us warnings and protection from vermin as well as thieves, mainly at Christmas time as thieves were after our turkeys!!

So that was my initiation to gardening and due care and respect for animals. 

So, with all this amount of nutritious food abound, it is little wonder why my good friend, Mahen to this day address me as his "Substantial Friend"???----- I like that as it is true -- just take one look at me!!!!.

Having got into a profession, I began a period of wandering around the country and then world as Bedouins -- "ahukuntayas" -Gypsies  without the caravan!!. In London, when I was under Post-Grad Training & living in the "Hospital ghetto" with hardly any space to move, we were very much starved for open spaces till I moved to Aberdeen, where we acquired a home with a garden and 2 allotments to cap it all. We grew our own and we all enjoyed the fresh vegies again. Our neighbours too benefited from our bonanza!!  Then moving to Dundee we lost our allotments. So we dug up our back garden and built raised beds as we were getting that much older suffering from APR and KR ("Konndehey Rudawa").

In NZ too, during my short stay there, we dug up the back garden & grew our own despite there being plentiful very fresh stuff in the markets at all times.

Age old habits do die hard, but these have helped us to lead a life in the fresh air and get the exercise needed that is important at our age.

I shall post some photos of our handiwork with my 'dirty' & my wife's fair hands or is it the other round???. Shall leave it to you to decide!!

Raised beds prepared for planting. 

Flame tulip in garden.

Magnolias in my front garden. Also Azaelias ...spot the black magnolia at crest of the blue flowers.