Squeaky Green

As friends and relatives will likely know, I like to do a bit of gardening. Unfortunately I don't get much time (nor have much space) to do that here in Bangalore. But... About a year ago, we went to a gardening center to pick out some potted plants and other things to spruce up the house. I found a number of plants I liked and we took them home, or had them delivered. I also found a variety of seeds.

So what does this all have to do with squeaking, well not long ago, I heard squeaking one night outside our bedroom window. At first I thought it might be animals. After all we do leave the garbage out there sometimes for collection. I did some looking around and never found anything. Then I heard it again, and yet again, especially on stormy evenings. So I started to get suspicious. We have a couple of plants out there-- actually dwarf papaya trees.

See I had gotten the seeds when we were shopping last year. I had planted 2 in a very large pot, thinking we would have some small (4-6 foot) papaya trees in the pot. Well, they outgrew the pot, and the gardener (who is now gone by the way--he just took off one day and never came back) moved them from the pot on the roof to by the side and front of the house.

I thought I might get one or two papayas from the trees when they started to flower, but holy cow, never this. And guess what, they squeak when the wind blows the trees around. So that is why I hear squeaking outside the window at night. Strangely enough only one of the three plants is very fruitful, the second has a few fruit, and the third has none, though it is around the corner from the other two.