Sprouting Fence Posts

Long (long) before I was born, back in the days when Britain had such things as colonies (nowadays they’re called British Overseas Territories), my grandparents lived in modern day Malawi (then known as Nyasaland), East Africa. Many (many) years later, after my grandparents had long since moved back to England and I had been born, my grandparents would tell me stories about their days in Africa – places like Zomba and Blantyre still have a slightly magical ring to me, even though I’ve never been to either.

One day my grandmother said something to me that has always stuck in my mind – she told me that in Nyasaland (as it would always be known to her) the earth had been so fertile that the fence posts would actually sprout leaves and branches. For me, as a wide-eyed seven year old, it was an amazing image and although I’ve since heard it used to simply signify ‘very fertile’, it will always conjure up images of a part of East Africa I’ve never seen.

Well, although our apartment here in Rio is very spacious and has plenty of outside space, it isn’t really the kind of place that needs fence posts. However, I’m starting to suspect that if it did, right now they’d need weekly pruning! Just over a month ago I cleaned up our then-empty window boxes and planted them with a mixture of herbs and roses.

I remember chatting to my wife about how nice it would be to have our own herbs and how I hoped they’d be OK out there on the windy precipice. And then she told me about a very famous letter that was sent back to Portugual from one of the earliest explorers here in Brazil. It was a very interesting story/quote, but frustratingly I can’t find it right now (and my wife has gone out) so I will have to paraphrase/make it up. [Incidentally, assuming that A) it really is famous and B) any of you know your Brazilian history, perhaps someone could help me out with finding this?].

So the explorer sent back word saying “Everything we put in the ground, grows” (hmmm, it sounded way better when my wife told the story in Portuguese). Well, when I heard this quote I felt rather positive about the window boxes and a little more than four weeks later, here are the results:

September, a few days after I’d put everything in.

 

October – herbal surplus!

I’ve tried, with limited success, to line up the photos so you can kind of scroll up and down and see how much rampant growth there has been – (I know, a bit primitive in these days of time-lapse and image morphing). Just try to use your imagination…

Anyway, I now have the very nice problem of coming up with new ways of using up our vast stocks of herbs – homemade pesto anyone?

======== UPDATE! ========

Many thanks to the very knowledgeable Maurício M for dropping the requested information into my lap. The explorer I mentioned was in fact named Pêro Vaz de Caminha and he was part of an expedition that, in 1500, discovered (from a European point of view) Brazil. He wrote a letter back to King Manuel I of Portugual to inform him of the discovery, the first text ever written in Brazilian lands (thanks again Maurício!) which is considered the birth certificate of Brazil apparently.

 

It’s a rather splendid looking letter I’m sure you’ll agree – I know I’m not a nation, but if I was, I’d be very proud to have this as my birth certificate. And the actual line I was grappling for earlier?  

 

Em se plantando, tudo dá. 
[told you it sounded better in Portuguese]