Country in the City

One doesn’t find a lot of vegetables and fruit trees growing in the city. To me, growing your own produce has always been a hallmark of country living.

In Hawaii that means out there in the formerly agricultural suburbs, or on the neighbor islands. But occasionally one finds food being grown in city homes. It’s a case of you can take the person out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the person.

My in-laws originally moved to Honolulu from Maui. Lahaina, to be specific. And they had all kinds of trees in their backyards. A cow too, and rabbits, if I recall correctly. So they were used to having agriculture around the house.

I grew up in Hilo, but the only agricultural product we had at our home was sugar cane. And that wasn’t even in our yard; our lot bordered a sugar cane field. (Someday I’ll recount … again … my sugar cane field saga.)

Our home in lower Manoa sports two varieties of mango trees  -- Haden (my favorite), which hasn’t fruited in years because of some drastic pruning we had to do a few years back; and Pirie (I dislike this variety because it’s extremely perfumy), which fruits like crazy. Both are varieties that originally came to Hawaii from India.

Figs

We also have a small fig tree that has started bearing fruit. The fruit never gets ripe on the tree, however, because they are attacked by birds when they are half-ripe. The wife picks them when they are slightly yellow-green, but they’re not that tasty. Gotta be ripe, I say.

We have a Surinam cherry bush. That one’s near our front door and it’s a pretty plant, especially when the red “corrugated” cherries dot the bush. You know of course about our pomelo tree (I’ve run pictures of the cherries and pomelo before), and I think I’ve mentioned the banana tree that used to be in the back. That one, however, is gone.

Green onion flowers

Our neighbor has a guava tree that sometimes hangs over our driveway, which is great when it’s fruiting. Again, a big problem is the birds that are constantly around the houses in our neighborhood.

Finally, my mother-in-law took some rooted ends of green onions and planted them in a pot. They took root and are growing nicely, blooming occasionally.

Have you ever seen a green onion flower tuft before?

It’s simply … country in the city.