Wednesday 25 February 2009

Weeding pineapples under the shade of a banana tree

That sounds like a good title for my first book!  JK :).

Every full time doc at Kudjip Hospital has one free afternoon per week.  So nice, because it helps to make up for the nights we are up on call.  My afternoon off is Thursday for now.  I began the morning seeing patients on Medical or "C-ward," where I am assigned to this week.  After finishing rounds, I headed home for some R&R.  Well, an afternoon off anyways.

I chose to spend my day working in the monstrous garden that Becky and I inherited with our house.  Having a garden is very practical here in PNG.  The missionaries only go to town and market once a month, so a garden makes it possible to have fresh fruits and veggies throughout the rest of the month.  It is so productive thanks to warm sunshine and a daily shower.  And I have also discovered that pulling weeds can be quite therapeutic.

I changed into my get dirty clothes and mud shoes, slathered up with sun screen, and added a layer of bug repellent.  My first two hours were occupied by weeding a row of pineapple... bushes?  I guess that is what I would call them.  We have about 5 rows of these things.  Before coming to PNG I thought that pineapples grow on trees.  Nope, they grow from the ground.  The first crop produces only one fruit, but in subsequent years each bush will produce several at a time.  I learned today that the leaves of pineapple bushes are quite sharp.  Note to self #1:  wear a long sleeve shirt next time.

Next stop of my gardening rampage was the blackberry patch.  From what I understand, these are not native to PNG.  One of the former missionaries planted a few seeds, and the plants have grown up beautifully.  We have berries in all stages of development, from flowers to green buds to red to black ripe fruit.   I picked about a quart of berries today, and that was after I picked every patch clean yesterday!  They seem to ripen before your eyes.  I am going to start freezing them with plans to make a pie one of these days.  Yummm.

I finished up my afternoon by collecting lemons from our three lemon trees out front.  We have more lemons than I know what to do with!  Lemonade, lemon bars, lemon chicken, lemon this, and lemon that.  Let me know if you have any good recipes.  Note to self #2:  squeeze lemons BEFORE getting sliced up while working in the garden.  Ouch.

"The Lord will guide you always...
you will be like a well-watered garden,
like a spring whose waters never fail."
~ Isaiah 58:11

10 comments:

  1. I loved readying this. It makes my mouth water! Sounds wonderful! I'll bet dad would LOVE working in that garden! :-)

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  2. Hey Steph, if you have room in your freezer you can squeeze the lemons and put the juice in ice cube trays and when frozen store in baggies or a container of some sort so then you just pop out a few and use as needed:)

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  3. How about I'll just come on down and work your garden for you and then you won't have to go out there and get all cut up. It sounds like my kind of garden. You don't have to check the soil ph or send the soil away to find out what the ph is or any of that. Your irrigation is automatic and you just go out and pick delicious fruits and veggies. WOW!! I really like hearing from you and knowing how the Lord is using you. Keep up the good work. God Bless.

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  4. Boy, I thought pineapples grew on trees also! The things you can learn from missionaries!

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  5. hey sis in law, just thought i would comment on the whole pineapple in the tree theory....i TOTALLY knew pineapples grew on the ground :p ...check out the movie 50 first dates and you can see acres and acres of them. ( And no thats not how I found that out!!!) Looking forward to visiting sometime!

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  6. D... is that you? Smarty pants :P.

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  7. lol yes, that was him ;) he tends to know a LOT of interesting information... so when i need to know something i just can ask him or one of our parents and probably be able to get the correct answer. (though not sure how great that is cause then whatever they say i'd probably believe. ;) )

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  8. and he was the one who wanted to know about the beetle nut too, of course. :)

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  9. I always thought pineapples grew on trees, too, until my first trip to Africa (Ghana in college) and we went to a pineapple farm-- I was shocked! Weeding IS very therapeutic; it's always fun to play in the dirt :)

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  10. This is so interesting-thank you for sending your newsletter, this is fascinating! I can't wait to hear more! God bless you and your work there, from Desirae at Cove Church of the Nazarene (your LINKS church)

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