LIVING PARADISE

As of today we have made the house at 2164, Taman Samudera Timur our permanent resident for 1 year 7 months.

Since then too we have brought back life to the house since it was left vacant as soon as it was completed.

It is true with what they say - a house will age faster if not lived in. Human dwellers somehow give life to any house.

I remember how neighbours referred to our house as lifeless, unkempt and uncared for. Well, that was when it was just a rest house for us - that only during school holidays and Eids.

Can't blame them for that really. Our house then would always be overgrown with Imperata cylinderica (lalang).
Everytime we came back and inhabit the house, there would be 3-4 feet of lalang in the compound! Once or twice we even saw snake's shed skin along the fence.

But now, anyone who had seen the house before, would for sure be taken aback. It is so green and alive that neighbours passing it would stop and peek in to see the bio-transformation.

From afar they could see that green grass covered the entire compound. It is no more that pesty lalang, but it is now made up of Paspalum conjugatum and Axonopus compressus.

The resident dual-variety mango tree is busy fruiting - in fact I could not remember it being fruitless for long. Its neighbour, the jambu madu tree strangely flowerless after I over-trimmed it.

If you examine closer, you will see that the soil is alive with activities. Earthworm digested soil is everywhere. They also say that their presence signifies life!

Grasshoppers, crickets and butterflies are many too in the natural garden.

Moringa trees stand tall as they provide me with instant vitamin-rich shoots and the earth with the essential nitrogen. I am still waiting for them to bear pods though.

Yam (keladi) grow well in the shade provided by the mango tree. Those under direct sunlight seem to be suffering (they used to flourish when they were first grown during the monsoon).

The two Rambutan trees given by a colleague from DOA have different fate - one is growing fast (helped by Stocking's natural fertilizer) while the other is struggling.

The durian tree is also struggling in between the moringa and the bread fruit tree.

However, the most interesting things happening in our compound are the roosting of yellow-vented bulbuls in our mango tree, the gregarious Phillipines glossy starling chasing after grubs in the mango tree, the forever serenading black and white magpie robins and the fiercely protective swallow and her family (she keeps on attacking our Stocking).

Lastly, our Stocking is pining for Syafiq. He seems lost and sulking most of the time. He misses our Syafiq a lot - can't blame it as he has been living and sleeping together, they two for almost three months! And now Syafiq is well again after that terrible neck injury that he suffered and has now gone back to KL.