the bitter gnome must eat of the sweet grapes to fortify his life.
Tag Archives: Haiku
It's Time To Pollinate Vanilla!
The vanilla vines are flowering and it’s time to pollinate. The flowers are really beautiful; we have grown the plants up our coconut trees. In our experience, the flowers open in early morning and start closing by about 10am so there is small window of opportunity to pollinate. In past years, we tried to leave it to the stingless bees (meliponia) to do this labour-intensive work for us but we have only managed to get about 2 to 4 pods a plant. If hand pollinated correctly, each plant can produce about 50 to 100 vanilla pods.
We are hoping to get a few more vanilla pods this year so Gnome has been carrying the ladder from vine to vine to pollinate.
It’s a rather delicate operation whilst trying to balance yourself on a ladder too…another Gnome job to add to his lengthy curriculum vitae.
The vanilla will be flowering for for the next 2 to 4 weeks. So, we’ll be up early every day messing around with the vanilla for a while. What Fun. 🙂
Oh and another Gnome Haiku describing this experience:
his aluminium
wings shudder with strain while bees
bathe in yellow pollen
Thursday Haiku.
Haiku Gnome.
Some of you may have noticed that Gnome has started posting up Haikus. I think that it is a good thing and it gives us a few giggles and guffaws. Often when we find something humourous, nobody else does so this one may purely be for our own benefit. Though we would be pleased if these were received with joy and release in your hearts too. 😉
So, how did this come about? This is what happened…
I had received a pannetone cake tin from a friend and I was anxious to bake one and show a picture on my Blog. Well, that was the plan anyway. In my usual haphazard way of baking I proceeded without a recipe. Just sort of made it up. Needless to say, the baking venture went wrong. I was all in a tizz in the kitchen, getting myself into a maddening hysteria. It was one of those really, really hot days.
Gnome was hot and bothered too and was in no mood for my antics. He said rather coarsely:
“If you had actually read a recipe and done it properly, you wouldn’t be in this mess! It’s your own fault!”
Waaaahhhh!! I was none too pleased with his reply. It made me Waaaaahhhh!! even more.
When Gnome realised that his directness had only served to exacerbate the situation, his countenance suddenly changed. Anger was replaced by cool placidity. He said with unwavering surety,
“The caterpillar must grow wings in order to flutter high.”
Gnome had made a complete U-turn in our usual “chucking-a-maddy”script which shifted me off balance.
I paused in mid-flail. Arms in the air.
What an obtuse reference…it was all too funny!! We both saw the stupidity of the whole situation and cracked up laughing.
This is when we got the idea that Gnome should start writing Haikus. Often, he is viewed as too direct and honest in his words. So this is an opportunity for Gnome expression; nicely obtuse and obscure and uncharacteristically airy-fairy for an immensely pragmatic Gnome.
