Good Night

Green Thumb Sunday
The garden tucks itself in by gently folding petals into the centre. The hibiscus in particular beds down with an air of relief. Anything to escape the May heat and to welcome the cool night air.
This last yellow is reluctant to go to bed, Not so this double red. He should perk up again by tomorrow morning.
No, this is not a hibiscus. It is a curly lily. I have never seen one like it before and I picked it up at the horticultural market and this is the second blooming of the year. As I write this, the frogs are bellowing from the copper and the cicadas have been screaming for rain all evening. For those that think I may be using purple prose here, this is not hyperbole. There is an incredible racket outside tonight. I love the sounds of our night.
Another more common lily that is locally referred to as an "Easter lily".

Another sleepy one. This is one of my new ones and is a recent import from Miami. I have never seen this particular colour locally. It is a true orange with no hint of red or coral in it.

The flowers of a miniature ixora. The little flowers are exquisite as they open. Each little one perfect in its symmetry.
Good night. Good night frogs, cicadas, crickets. Protect us from the batchacs as we sleep.

The Heart of Things

This is a new hibiscus that is really lovely. I don't know the name of it but it is a red double with splashes of yellow. Thank you Wendy Lee Yuen, who sold it to me. It was in bud when I brought it home so I was waiting with bated breath for the flower to open. And ta-da. I am thrilled. I don't have tremendous experience with hibiscus because the mealy-bug epidemic wiped out most on the island. The hybrids were especially hard hit so I am pleased to see that they are making a come back. This is my common orange that I grew from a piece taken from a bush in Brasso Seco (Northern Trinidad mountain range).
The brave new world. The stamen from my large, single pink.
New growth on my staghorn fern. The network of veins illuminated by the rising sun really struck me. So much life-veins and capillaries rushing to carry precious nutrients for growth. Just like us.

This is a croton. No it's not brightly coloured but it is, nevertheless, a croton. Albeit a ridiculously slow growing one. And the shot below is an example of a grumbling calladium. He is beginning to burn because the sun has changed direction and he's getting too hot. If I can keep him hydrated and relatively happy, this too shall pass but I must be careful not to ignore his signs of distress.


On the other hand, this is about as happy as a calladium gets. She is in a basket under the mango tree. She's cool, has good drainage and filtered light. It doesn't get much better for a calladium.

Tobago the Extraordinary

Tobago is a different space. Really, I do not say this lightly. For years the cuisine chat coming out of Tobago has focused on the Store Bay stalwarts such as crab and dumpling and the legendary blue food that is so tied into the cultural traditions of Tobago. But growing steadily alongside this "blue food" tradition is a unique Euro/Caribbean street food that I have not seen anywhere else in the region. Artists, chefs and other wanderers have captured a niche in Tobago Usually it's people seeking to escape the global hamsterwheel and an interesting artistic/culinary culture is beginning to take shape. The evolution of both the art form and cuisine coming out of Tobago is almost impossible to imagine in Trinidad.
There is a naivety to Tobago that permits this expression. It is an interesting anomaly in a region that has become largely dominated by corporate tourism. I suspect in years to come, these will be referred to as the "golden days" before the world "discovered" Tobago.
The day after the Jazz festival, we decided to do a bit of exploring and stumbled upon two very unique experiences. The first was heaven sent. My hangovers call for protein so a tenderloin tartare was just what the doctor ordered. But really what are the chances of stumbling upon such an offering on an idle midday walk? La Cantina is run by a charming young couple- Trinidadian Kisha Monti met her Italian husband in the Bahamas and the rest is history. They raise their two girls in Tobago and run an authentic Italian pizzeria (complete with roaring wooden oven) and offer fabulous fare (see the board below).
I was able to get in behind the scenes to see the pizza dough being rolled and slung into shape. This was the type of expereince that I always anticipated having in New York or Italy but never Tobago.
With lightning speed, it was flung, dressed and shovelled into the roaring mouth of the fiery oven.
Yum!
Ross said it was great and my tartare was just what the doctor ordered.

Don't panic at the prices. Our exchange rate is roughly $6.00 to $1.00US.
If you get to Tobago, pass the Coco Reef entrance and turn into the Royal Bank compound on the left. There you will find La Cantina and bizarrely, this space is shared with a bona fide Cuban cigar roller? Is that what they are called? There he was rolling his cigars and listening to a Venezuelan radio station on his short wave radio. Language was a bit of a problem so I couldn't pin down a whole lot of history but like his Italian counterpart, he was the real thing.
These tobacco leaves are brought in from Cuba but Tobago once grew her own tobacco and, if I am not mistaken, this is where the word Tobago originated. Correct me if I am wrong, but I remember reading this years ago.

So in one weekend I was able to see Rod Stewart, Shakira and Whitney Houston live and close up in concert. Swim and lime in some pretty spectacular water, eat some great tartare, watch the pizza dough fly through the air AND see some cigars being rolled. A good weekend.

Smelling the Parrots

Every now and then I lose my rhythm. It is so insiduous that it may be days before I realize I'm off kilter. Something in my centre blurs and I have to consciously realign.

Tonight while searching for batchacs with a torch and watering my desert dry garden, I smelled the parrots. They have a distinct fruity smell and when I pick it up on the night air, I know they are nesting in nearby trees.
These photos tonight are from my sister-in-law Joy's garden. I have three sisters-in-law and two of them are excellent gardeners (the third lives a very glam life as a lawyer currently posted in Mumbia).
My post tonight is dedicated to Jackie and Joy who have taught me so much about having a garden.

I am happy that I live in a place that allows me these beautiful moments. Trinidad is no utopia. In fact, it can be a brutal and devastating place and any any random Google of Trinidad will turn up the bad with the good.
But it is also one of the most beautiful places on Earth and those of us born here carry our nationalism in our bones.
I have so much to post on- a recent short course in Greenhouse horticulture, a weeklong course in landscape management and a flamboyant tree that is waiting, waiting, waiting..... to burst into its annual scarlet show- but for tonight- I'm just glad to be back on track and happy to smell the parrots.

Rod Stewart in Tobago

Rod Stewart. What a privilige to see him close up. Make no bones about it, this 62 (?) year old still has a lot of life in him. He was by far the best performer at the recent Plymouth, Tobago Jazz Festival.
Kudos to his back up singers who were electric. And the saxaphonist. What an amazing job to have. Rod Stewart understands the mechanics of putting on a good show. Entertainment. He was able to completely captivate the crowd for a little over an hour with a series of costumes changes and by giving each of his band their time at the front line. And he won the hearts of all of us by starting off with ......"I am liking this feeling". Yes Rod, so were we.
Sad that this dynamic act only made poor Whitney Houston look even more frail. And note to Whitney's publicist- we who live hear are not interested in hearing how big our mosquitoes are on this side of the world. I think Tobago should collectively adopt Whitney and grow her back to health. It's so sad to see talent like that flailing.

So that you Rod et al., you are welcome back here anytime.

Rites of passage

I have always been morbid. But morbidity has probably saved my sanity. It's been just over seven months since the death of my mother but the intensity of emotion the bubbles over at the strangest times still catches me off guard. The garden has been a tremendous source of healing and this was a new experience.

Death was a shock but the loss of a parent is the normal course of life, so why the prolonged grief?

When I visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art earlier this year, I was surprised at the amount of death rituals that I saw on display. The Egyptians excelled in this area and the beauty and form of the celebration of death was of great comfort to me. I am not being terribly eloquent- so will try and summarize-

I needed the ritual to help me accpet the natural passage of death. And obviously I was not inventing the wheel here- it is impossible to fly in the face of death- so the way to deal with it is to ritualize it-
My mother and I talked a lot about birth, especially when it was my turn, death, plants, recipes and all the other things that make for the cement of emotional ties- but I was deeply shocked by the actual physical-ness of it when it happened.
When my grandmother died, she died in bed at home struggling to articulate an urgent message. The story of a thousand B movies but very real in my house. It was a Carnival weekend and everthing moved at such breakneck speed that she was buried the next day, a Saturday. In the confusion, I kept dreaming repeatedly, about her attempting to come back into the house and me having to say to her- go back, it's over - you are dead- her retort to me- you buried me without my shoes- where are they? Questions to my mother were useless- she was having her own drama with my agitated recently deceased grandmother- she kept having dreams of early morning phone calls- my mother saying to her- You are dead, you can't keep calling me. We had masses said, we looked for the shoes and we moved on.
All this came back to me while walking through the Met. Death is not something to be dealt with lightly. It's what makes us human. For us left behind, they live in us and we honour them in living the lives that they helped build. In my case, they live in my garden.
The excerpt below is taken directly from the Met and helped me tremendously.
Lest I seem too maudlin tonight, on the contrary, I am now coming out on the other side

The art and religion of the Asmat people of Southwest New Guinea centres primarily on the spirits of the recently dead. Nearly all Asmat groups celebrate, or celebrated, the mask feast, a series of festivals culminating when the dead, personified by performers wearing full length body masks return to visit the community.
The rites involve two types of masks. The first, a single conical mask depicting a legendary orphan appears as a comical prelude. The second type of mask seen here portrays the dead. Each mask of this type is named for a specific individual. At the climax of the ceremony, the masked performers representing the dead emerge from the forest and tour the village where they are offered food and hospitality. They eventually arrive in the front of the men’s ceremonial house where the dead and the living join in a ceremonial dance which goes long into the night. The following morning, the dead now properly fed and entertained or frightened by threats of violence, depart for safan, the realm of the ancestors