Bougainvillea:The Flower of Passion

Could you name a garden plant with flowers all year? My science teacher asked us when I was in 6th grade in our village school. He had to answer the question himself as we all guessed it wildly wrong. Though I have never looked it up to verify the correctness of that answer, I just believed it to be true for, ever since, I’ve seen bougainvillea in bloom on and off all year. 

Bougainvillea looks gorgeous and seems to be present almost everywhere, one of the most widely distributed and versatile ornamental plants. It is found everywhere in warm climates worldwide, inviting our attention, especially where they are well exposed to sunlight. Evergreen in tropical and subtropical climes but deciduous in colder climates especially during winter.

We mistake its paper-thin bracts of various colors for its flowers. In fact, its real flowers are tiny white ones, often unnoticeable from a distance as they are overshadowed by bracts of vibrant colors of pink, white, orange, purple, yellow, burgundy, etc.

Bougainvillea grooms itself to put on a very colorful display, offering a free feast for the eyes on waysides and as garden hedgerows. It is usually seen as thorny ornamental vines, bushes, and trees belonging to the Four o'clock family of plants, or Nyctaginaceae. It is particularly eye-catching when trellised or espaliered.

Though well-known to all as an everyday plant, the name is not easy to spell for many as it comes from French. It is believed to have been first recorded by French botanist Philibert Commerçon, in the 1760s. It was so named by Commerçon, after the French admiral, Loui-Antoine de Bougainville, an explorer whom Commerçon had joined on an expedition around the world. What an immortalizing gift from a fellow traveler!

Interestingly, in my mother tongue, it is known as kadalasupoovu. That can be literally translated as paper flower, obviously mistaking the paper-like bracts for their flowers. People grow them in their gardens for their stunningly colored bracts, not for the creamy white flowers.

So go get one in a color of your choice or a mix of many if you want to add easy and lasting color to your garden or landscape. As a bonus, you will be contributing to the ecosystem since bougainvillea provides shelter and nutrition to butterflies and birds. 

Leave the remains to those who claimed it first

      In our backyard, we meticulously manage a variety of fruit plants nursing them into fruition. Many of them escape our attention and reach on time when they are all set to make us happy. Though late at times, we do go for harvest at reasonable intervals and enjoy ourselves. The extra harvest would usually go for distribution in the neighborhood and to friends and families.

One very heartening sight is to see the much-awaited fruit already claimed by its natural stakeholders. Squirrels, bats, parrots, bulbuls, crows and so goes the long list of mainly arboreal but rodents like rats too join the gang.  We don’t care much if the plant is grown on its own from the seeds sown by the same gangsters. Of course, there are some very good ones of that sort around. The ones we do a to z to grow and look forward to fruiting but end up seeing a good portion already shared up is very frustrating. We the young generation make haste to destroy the remaining portion in vengeance for looting our bounties. I don’t know how far we can rightfully use “our” the possessive adjective before fruit in this sentence.

 “Leave the remains to those who claimed it first”. My mom’s quick intervention as our team leader would soon leave us with no other option.  This is her way of looking at it. The fruits they started feasting on will therefore remain right there until they are fully used up by each member on and off taking their turns. At their mercy lies whatever ones are yet-to ripe for our table and taste buds. And to our misery, we don’t judge how good a plant is, as Matshona Dhliwayo suggested, by examining how many birds flock to feed off its fruit.

As a soul is blown into a recipe...

Whenever I open my mouth to appreciate someone in my neighborhood, especially for the food they make and share with us, my partner would say, “neighbor’s wife is always beauty”. This is her way of saying that her own version of the same often goes underappreciated. However, there are a few dishes we get offered that she too can’t help admitting her admiration for. The one in this shot is just one among those few. The food diplomacy among neighbors living closely together has a lasting impact.

 “Please add a little water into the curry you made for yourself and offer a share to your neighbor”. It was a famous saying of the Prophet on those days of less prosperity. Now most of us don’t have to dilute in order to have enough to share but can cook as much for both households. Thank God, we are living in one of the best times in history, though many may  disagree.

Food has always attracted people, kept the folks together, and helped people to show they care. We know that food is tastier when shared with good friends. Every culture has its own unique food-sharing culture, traditional dishes made to share, endearing histories behind, and a lot of interesting stories of sharing and care. And offering a portion of one’s food is not only an act of intimacy but a universal habit shared by all the people staying intimately together. Cesar Chavez put it more succinctly, "The people who give you their food give you their heart.”

What if we put all the eggs in the same basket?

    My colleague from Egypt told me once about those times when he was growing up, a child in his village. The men from the cities mounting their donkeys carrying household utensils would go from door to door in the villages to trade their offerings for backyard chicken eggs. They had their designated days for barter, and they knew their potential business partners very well. A win-win situation for both womenfolk in the countryside and door-to-door vendors from afar. 

Back in the South Indian highlands, while I was a trainee teacher, I saw women making a difference with the eggs they got from raising chickens at their homestead and selling them to greengrocers in their hometown. Home-produced eggs always enjoyed better prices than the commercially mass-produced ones. The women didn't have a farmers’ market so they sold the eggs to their favorite greengrocers, who would resell them for a small profit.

A sincere word of thanks goes to Teena Jewel Kuriakose, living on a vast ranch in Atlanta, USA, who shot this edible platter of colorful, glowing eggs for our blog a week ago. Obviously, she nurtures a good number of prolific egg-laying breeds. They thank her back in multiple colors after feasting on weeds and insects in the yard all around. Note: don’t mistake this for a photoshopped image. It is a day’s worth of eggs collected from the coop. Teena gives away her surplus from the farm at church services, where she meets the people in the neighborhood. She is just one of many who are growing a fair portion of their own food even though they strictly don’t have to, as everything they need is readily available, only a few clicks or a call away.

Well, I can quite picture Teena this Sunday, on her knees in the back row of her church, praying: “Lord, help me be the person my chickens think I am”.

Jacaranda somehow smells it first….

We grow happier as we start spotting the first of its blooms showing up. And for a special reason, which we pin on jacarandas in full bloom in the neighborhood: we know that our summer vacation is not far - the one we all have been looking forward to.  All this is thanks to our city gardeners, who made a U-alley by planting the jacarandas in line on either side of a paved walkway alongside a long dried-up river. How did I then know that it used to be a river without there being any trace of water? There is still an arch bridge built during the time of the Ottoman Empire connecting people on both sides.

For quite long, we didn’t have a name to call the tree with the purple-blue flowers by. Nor did we feel any need for one. Dr. Paul, the crazy man with a scientific temperament among us, first called it “Jacaranda mimosifolia”; this didn’t take long to become a household name but the “mimosifolia” part was conveniently dropped. No one refuted Dr. Paul as our knowledge of botany didn’t even cover the basics, and his authority in scientific matters was undoubtable.

I am not yet sure whether to call it a flowering shrub or a tree. The jacaranda is now enjoying cosmopolitan status, having been widely introduced to several countries from its native Americas. Saudi Arabia – especially its cities sitting on mountain ranges - seemingly houses them better than their native homes. What a marvelous treat for tourists escaping the summer heat, coming to enjoy the lovely cool and often drizzling weather of Abha, a city in the Al Saravath Mountains. As Denise “Nisi” Mckenzie so memorably put it, “Oh, Jacaranda! Lining streets with purple bliss, dreamy petals dance”. 

Let us enjoy this delicate and fragrant dance while the magic lasts, before the jacarandas get decked out in their summer greenery.