ficus elastica
Dear Ciara,
A productive afternoon in the garden. While The Organist mowed the back lawn, I pottered about in the cool, late-afternoon sun. As I worked, weeding and pruning, I remembered that I had been avoiding an important job: pruning back our rubber tree. We have many trees in our garden, but perhaps the most striking is our ficus elastica. It is the burgundy variety, so the leaves are a deep purple colour reminiscent of red wine.
While a gorgeous tree, it should never have been planted in the garden. Rubber trees are highly invasive in Tropical Queensland and can go from tiny little cuttings to monstrous 50-metre-tall trees in the blink of an eye. There is one a few streets back from us that has essentially swallowed an entire drain in its mass. Not ideal. They also send out deep, twisting roots that can cause significant damage to pipes if not maintained. Ours was already here when we bought our house, so we have inherited the responsibility of keeping it small and manageable.
Armed with a saw and ladder, I got to work. I took off a good three-quarters of the height (with The Organist’s support), which will encourage the plant to bush out and remain smaller. The hardest part of pruning a rubber tree is dealing with the thick latex it produces when cut. I still have bits of it clinging to my skin as I am writing this. During the pruning, I encountered a gorgeous tree frog—I am unsure of the species—and an interesting spider covered in fine hairs. Take a look:
A part of me feels a little bad having pruned the tree, now knowing it was home to such a wide variety of wildlife. But the long-term benefits of pruning the tree outweigh the short-term disturbance to the animals. I relocated both the frog and spider to another, safer tree in the garden.
My neighbour, noticing our hard work, leant over the fence and gifted us a treat: a fresh soursop from his garden. If you haven’t tasted soursop before, it’s incredible. It’s a fruit in the custard apple family and tastes somewhere (at least to me) between a mango and a pineapple, with a sour undertone (hence the name). The flesh is soft and creamy—delicious after a few hours of hard work. Even better when cold. Soursop makes for an excellent sorbet.
After gorging myself, I returned the favour by gifting our neighbour something from our garden: a pineapple. I’ve been growing a few pineapples this year, and the first of my bunch was ready to harvest. I love being able to share food with my community.
Love,
The Gardener