When we decided to leave our tiny Paris flat to live in Mauritius, the thing I wanted more than anything was a garden, a place to sit and enjoy the warm weather and grow my own fruit and vegetables. We visited lots of beautiful gardens filled with mangoes, bananas, tropical flowers and even, one time, a swimming pool. Unfortunately all these gardens were attached to houses we did not want to live in for one reason or another. I never expected to reject a house on the grounds of it being too big, but even if all my family came at the same time, we would have been hard pressed to fill 5 spare ensuite bedrooms. There was also one place with a house in the garden. A real house, with a little old man sitting outside all day long. Oh, and the swimming pool was more of a green, murky pond, otherwise we'd definitely have gone for that one.
It turned out that the best house, in the best location (for us) was this one :
As you can see, not quite what I was hoping for. Apparently Chinese-Mauritians often choose gravel over grass because it's easier to maintain. The house has only just been built and we are the first people to rent it. It's spacious, modern and costs a fraction of the mortgage I was paying on my 1-bedroom Paris flat. The landlady is extremely friendly and each time she comes to collect the rent, she brings a gift of fruit or cakes. But as we signed the lease, I couldn't help being a bit disappointed that we wouldn't be able to grow our own produce.
I was not counting on the tiny triangle of compost the owners had planted with the idea of putting some flowers outside, or the fact that in the compost was a teeny tiny seed that would quickly grow into a garden invading monster. A few weeks after we moved in, it looked like this :
We asked around and everyone had their own idea of what it was but no-one knew for sure. We looked online and saw several plants with similar shaped leaves. The plant continued to grow, it produced some yellow flowers, and it even tried to wind its way into the wheel of our car while we were away for a few days. The last time I took a photo, it was this big:
(It's even bigger than this now, but it's dark outside so I can't go take another picture.) When the plant finally produced some fruit, everyone was baffled, nobody had ever seen it in the market, or even knew what it was. Eventually, the owner of the house identifed it as "calebasse chinoise" It's a vegetable, with the consistency of a melon and, when ripe, can weigh arouond 5kg. She also told us to prepare it in a bouillon. We have had about 10 of them so far and have given most of them away - the bouillon we made fed both of us for 2 meals and there's still a portion in the freezer. That was about a third of a vegetable. We also learned that it's often used as an offering in the Hindu festival Durga Pooja (they call it a battwa) and is the key ingredient in "gateau papaye", which I assumed was made with papaya. Nope.
We also discovered that our landlady planted a passion fruit tree which has just produced its first crop. It's a climber and seems to like the wire fencing round the back of our house. Unfortunately, half the fruit is on branches which have crept through into next door's garden, but there's still plenty for us. Between these, the new season mangoes from the landlady, and the custard apple from a friend's Mum's garden, I'm doing pretty well for my 5-a-day, and for minimal green fingered effort!
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