"Now, don’t plant anything until your hardscaping is finished," advised Hedi. "You need a retaining wall here, some steps there, and have this piece flattened out…"Sensible advice indeed. We have been stacking batako, carving planting beds and digging a pond for three months and officially have not started gardening. So where did the jungle along the side of the house come from? The riot of pumpkin vines that curl coolly around passing ankles? The frangipani tree so heavily laden with bloom that it fell over when a sunbird landed on it one luminous morning? The lemon trees, flowering vines, chillies, mint, turmeric, lemon grass, tomatoes….
I thought I was a gardening junkie but have met my match in my pembantu. Worse, we are both plant pirates. Wayan rarely arrives in the morning without a cutting or six from her own or a friend’s garden, and has been known to liberate an attractive plant from the drain along the road. We both believe that every fruit and vegetable seed is a gift that must be planted immediately. She nods approvingly when I drag home roots, seeds, berries and branches from the four corners of Ubud. She’s constantly tucking things in here and there -— and I have an awful lot of here and there. Last week I tripped over a hill of peanut plants I didn’t know we had. When a giant keladi leaf shifted the other day I found a coffee bush under it. A whole plantation of bananas appeared in the bamboo glade this morning and you can’t even see any gaps where they came from.
I love the tropics. You just put a seed in the ground, throw on some water and stand back. A month later green things are climbing the walls. Exotica that comes in expensive little packets at the health food store sprouts, stretches and becomes a sesame, fenugreek or soybean plant over the weekend.
What started as a little kitchen garden has become a little rain forest instead. I had to stop the practice of pitching all the fruit and vegetable seeds into it when the pumpkin vines began climbing trees and I counted 97 papaya seedlings in a couple of meters. In fact I have a serious papaya problem. There are literally hundreds of seedlings coming up all over the place. When I ask Wayan where they’re coming from, she looks vague. "Oh, maybe someone threw them there…" Guess who? But these papaya are especially sweet and fragrant, and very popular in the neighbourhood.
In Vancouver, banana plants are the height of oriental exotica. My sister nurtures hers lovingly, bringing the pot inside in the winter and worrying about how much water it should have. Her neighbour has boldly planted several in the ground, and monitors the short term weather forecasts on the internet so he knows when to wrap them up in their aluminium blankets against the frost.Here, they’re a pest. They thrive in wet weather and dry, with an endless family of children springing up close about their tattered skirts. Bananas are remorseless breeders. We cleared a patch of ground before marking out the perimeter of the pond, hauling away the massive trunks and chopping them up for pig food. I dug out all the roots I could find and hurled them down the cliff to start new colonies near the river. Now, months later, I am reminded that it’s not so easy to say no to a banana. The bare earth cracks a little, then splits open and a slender finger of green appears. Within a few days the green machine is a foot high, and when you try to dig it out the root ball is the size of a bucket. Now I let them grow a little and transplant them at the edge of the property. There’s a lot of edge, but there are a lot of bananas. It’s anyone’s guess as to which runs out first.It seems that plants are not the only edibles to be found in the garden. The other day I emptied an old pot and found it full of fat unlovely grubs. Displaying them on a gloved hand I asked my staff whether they were good for the garden or not. Wayan, who hates all things wriggly, declared that they were probably bad. Nyoman gazed at them thoughtfully for a moment then announced, "Good -— fried."On the night of the rain that broke the long drought, a million flying termites exploded out of the earth and swarmed the house. As we swept up piles of discarded wings the next day, I told Wayan that in Africa the local people ate them. "We do too," she said , "but these are pretty small."
She has a particular affection for spiders. When I point out a particularly large specimen she picks it up, gently gathers its toes between two fingers and strokes its head with great tenderness. She allows that a few sizeable spiders made a tasty snack. I was reminded of an encounter a few years ago in the rice fields behind Campuan, when I watched a farmer brush a large spider off his cankul. I asked whether it was poisonous. No, he replied, in fact they were good to eat. When I asked what they tasted like, he looked at me as if I was a simpleton. "Like dragonflies," he said patiently. Of course. Silly me.
Nyoman has finally finished the retaining wall near the alter and filled it with rich earth the colour of chocolate. "It will settle a little after the next rain," he warns. "Better wait before you plant." Then he grins. He knows I won’t.
Last week was a proud one. All of the flowers for the offerings had been gathered from the land — creamy whites, flaring oranges, royal blue, magenta, even the delicate curls of pandan leaves. The offering trays themselves were woven from our own coconut palm leaves.
