菜園在不遠遊 , 菜園在不看球

It was a disappointment as far as the luffa harvest is concerned.  My brother and sister arrived on August 12 and flew back to Boston where their daughter lives on August 16.  We could only come up with five luffas (one barely made it in term of the maturity), which were certainly not enough for our niece and two daughters in Boston.

Worse yet is almost nothing is coming up except a few; we lost the confidence about their chance of growing up.

We analyze the possible reason for the scarcity of luffa fruits and came to the conclusion that we failed to remove the leaves (疏葉) to let the sun light reach the female flowers buried under the leaves.  Without the light the female flowers wither, sort of like dying during the infancy, never got the chance to grow and bloom and got pollinated.  結果母花都被埋在好幾層的葉子下面沒有陽光不見天日而枯萎死了. 

The stems of the male flowers are very tall; they pierce through layers of leaves, soaking up all the sun light.  This is also why all we see (from upstairs) are male flowers.  It is not that we don’t have female flowers; we just don’t see them.

female flower dies in infancy

Francis Bacon said, “God’s first creature, which was light,” of course, this is another way of saying “Let there be light, and there was light.”  Without light, without life.

A week before my brother came, Katy went to Washington (PA) to cover the PONY League baseball for four days in a row (The team from Taiwan was the champion again); I went three days.  We also went to Washington, D.C. this past weekend.  The garden was long neglected.  We’re in the process of making amend (現在正搶救中), hopefully it will not be too late.

Then again we gardeners believe in tomorrow; they will always be tomorrow.

the healthy female flower