In April 2017 I ordered three passion fruit vines of different varieties and two grafted grape seedlings. We got lucky: by the second spring, both had flowered and set fruit. The grape vine was hung with plenty of berries, but they never got a chance to grow—they shriveled before they could develop. I had left the plants to fend for themselves, seldom tending or fertilizing them, and I had no idea what a grape vine needs before and after fruiting. Maybe that is why there was nothing to harvest. Lazy, in a word.
The passion fruit got the same treatment and still gave an unexpected return. The first year there were not many fruit, but over the next two years the vines grew vigorously and produced a lot. The fruit were plump and juicy, sweet-sour, and my daughter liked them. Then a typhoon came; the leaves were so dense that they shook the upstairs railing loose. My mother did not waste a word—she cut down the two passion fruit vines on the spot. When I got home from work and saw the bare rooftop, I felt the loss. We had finally reached a point of plenty, and then... The grape vine, meanwhile, has survived to this day, though we have never actually eaten a single grape from it. Its trunk keeps getting thicker, and now it is a real problem.
Water plants for the turtle pond
A couple of years ago I tried buying some marginal aquatic plants—sweet flag, bowl lotus, pennywort, water hyacinth, umbrella papyrus—to improve the turtle pond's environment and water quality. None really did what I wanted. Most died because the turtle pond water was too dirty. Only the pennywort and water hyacinth survived, in another pond, where they live alongside crucian carp we caught fishing; the water there stays quite decent.
Trumpet creeper and jaboticaba
This March I bought two trumpet creeper plants and put them in. It took more than half a month before they showed new leaves. For a while I had been turning over the idea of growing a jaboticaba on the roof. In the end I decided to just buy one and plant it—if the tree gets too tall in a few years, I can prune it or move it back to the backyard at my parents' place. I spent a few dozen yuan on a two- or three-year-old sapling. It is in the ground now, and I hope it survives. If I ever want fruit from it, the earliest is probably three or four years away.
