The Garden

Towards the end of the rainy season, I decided to take a tour of my host family's garden to see what all was growing in it. There are actually a lot more kinds of plants growing out behind our house than I had originally thought, although I'm not sure if we eat all the fruits and vegetables we grow or not.

We have a growing number of papaya trees. The fruits start out green, like they are here, just where the branches begin to stem from the tree, and slowly turn yellow and then orange as they ripen. Sometimes, because the trees are slender, they become so overladen with fruit that they simply fall over. Luckily this tree is still upright and producing more papayas.


We also have an eggplant, um, plant. Cambodians eat small eggplants, usually just raw with prahoc (fish paste---delicious!).


There are a couple of thin young sugarcane stalks too. My host mom used to sell sugarcane juice in her store in front of the house, but then she broke her wrist. Because selling sugarcane juice is physically a lot of work (you have to shave the stalk; then start the press by pulling a cord, like starting a lawnmower; then put the stalks through the press), she stopped doing that while her wrist heals. In any case, we could never grow enough sugarcane out back to supply the store, so I don't know why we have these plants. Back at the end of rainy season when there was very heavy rainfall, a couple of the stalks (on the right side of the picture) fell over because the ground was too saturated to support them.

We also have a banana tree or two. Bananas are so beautiful!

And we have some pretty flowers that seem to grow on a plant that has no fruit.

Finally, we have a couple of mystery trees. I have no idea what those strange round fruits are. I wonder if they are delicious.

My tour of the garden yielded so many interesting discoveries. My only regret is that we have no mango tree. Guess it'll be fresh papayas for dessert this season instead of mangoes.