Rescue me…

My rambutan tree…

…had not been doing very well for a while now. If you are interested in its history, you can read all about it here. It did flower and bear fruit towards the end of last year but sporadically. The fruits were few and far between and besides, they were small, not fleshy nor juicy and sweet so we did not even bother to go and pluck them – we just left them there to wither and turn black and drop off the tree.

How did it turn out this way, you may wonder? Well, for one thing, it had been sadly neglected, terribly in need of fertilisers, surviving solely on the sunshine and the rain and another reason was that there were all the wild orchids…

…and parasitic plants growing on the branches, absorbing all the moisture from them, drying them all up and choking them to death. I did try to get rid of some, the ones closer to the ground but my missus would not let me climb up the tree. “The branches are all so brittle,” she said, “and you are so fat! They will break the instant you step on them.”

It would be so sad to just let it die as it is the sole survivor here, the only one left but my paternal cousin in  Miri did tell me once that they had one tree there, from my grandfather’s fruit garden in Sg Merah here a long long time ago so if we include that one, there are only two left of this very nice and really special variety of the fruit.

I was absolutely delighted last Sunday morning when Peter (If you’re a regular reader of my blog, you would know which Peter I’m talking about) brought his boys to my house to help get rid of those plants on the tree…

and saw away the branches that were dead and gone…

…not just to get rid of them…

…but also to trim the tree a bit in the hope that this would encourage the growth of fresh new branches.

They even painstakingly scraped away the green moss on the branches…

They said that it would be as bad as the plants and would kill the branches as well.

This is what the tree looks like now…

The foliage is not as thick as before and the sun can come shining through so it is no longer as dark and damp under those leaves anymore, conditions ideal for the growth of this wild orchids and parasitic plants as well as the green moss.

Thank you so so so much, Peter and the boys – I certainly would not be able to manage without your help. After this, I will have to do a little bit of weeding under the tree and dig the soil to add fertilisers and what not in the hope that the tree will be looking really good again…and fingers crossed, it will bear fruit in abundance come the end of this year!