FIFTEEN YEARS ago (give and take a couple of years), my late husband and I went to a nearby nursery and asked for a cempedak tree.
I love to eat cempedak, so he thought that it would be a good idea for us to plant a cempedak tree on our vacant space. That way, I could have all the cempedaks I ever wanted, without necessitating him to hunt for one, during odd hours of the day.
We purchased cempedak, nangka (jackfruit), mangga (mangoes) and jambu air plants.
When the nursery assistant went around and came back, within seconds later, with four polybags of fruit plants, we looked at each other. Neither one of us was able to verify which plant was which. Instead, we happily drove home. We took the nursery guy for granted after he explicitly pronounced the names of the plants we had bought: “one cempedak, one nangka, one manggis and one healthy jambu air.“
Soon after, I planted my favourite ‘cempedak‘ tree, whereas, my late planted the rest. Several years later, the nangka (see photo below), mangga and jambu air out-lived him. The three trees he planted, had grown marvelously, and bore fruits for us, year after year, without fail.
In the mean time, the cempedak tree I planted also grew tall (see first photo) and bore funny-looking tiny-minny little buds. It had never occured to me that the buds were just too small to belong to a cempedak tree.
One day, as I was looking out my bedroom garden, I saw several bunches of … deliciously-tempting, mouth-watering rambutans. Immediately, I called out one of my daughters to go over our neighbour’s house to ask if we could have some of those tasty rambutans.
She went, came back and said: “Ma, the neighbour said that the rambutans are not theirs. The rambutans are ours. In fact, they asked if THEY can have some.”
We all rushed outside. We couldn’t believe our eyes. The tree that was supposed to be cempedak, turned out to be rambutan!
I looked at my children and said to myself: Stop, stop GG. You can’t allow your kids to know that you’re blind as a bat, when it comes to gardening. Ouch!
– GG
GG's CHILIES & HERBS GARDEN 