My mother's people were known for their spare cooking. It's one adaptation to the harsh uplands where they originated. Among the few spices that they treasured, it was ginger that played perhaps the biggest role both in cooking and as herbal remedy.
Many dishes in my parents' household used ginger as spice. Later in life, I came to use it myself in a number of meat, chicken and fish dishes that I love to cook. My grandmother also taught me to drink ginger tea and apply a ginger oil concoction for gas pains -- stomach troubles having been my Achilles heel since childhood (and up to now, to some degree).
In my young and wild bohemian-activist days in the bustling metropolis, I forgot about this childhood taste. Years later, however, my long exposure to indigenous highland life with its simple dishes, drinks and herbal remedies revived my interest in ginger.
My problem was that, meanwhile, the varieties of ginger available in the market had become too commercialized, too packaged, too bland for my tastes. I hated these bimbo varieties, and hankered for the wild and tangy native gingers of my childhood. So I decided to try and cultivate my own ginger.
Everywhere I went, I looked for that elusive variety of ginger that soothed my childhood's stomach wants and aches. But the bimbo varieties -- artificially whitened, bloated, and totally unappealing -- had invaded even the indigenous regions, apparently edging out the native varieties that appealed to me. I made up my mind that these bimbo varieties will never grow in my yard, much less in my inner taste buds.
In a few upland villages that I visited, however, I did find ginger varieties growing shamelessly in their full native aroma and color. I always made sure to cut up a couple of rhizomes, take them home with me and plant them in the yard. But all of them failed to sprout in my yard either.
I couldn't understand why. I tried to plant them in different pots, in different soils, in different parts of the yard, shaded and sunny, soggy or dry... they all just lay there dormant and rotting.
I dropped all attempts, blamed either my ungreen thumb or my too-green yard, forgot all about my unrequited love, and turned my attention elsewhere.
Early this year, however, a colleague who knew my failed efforts to cultivate ginger gave me an odd-looking rhizome. It came all the way from south China. She said it was turmeric -- a different species of the same ginger family that might even be harder to grow but had that rare aroma highly valued by Asian peoples.
"Who knows?" she said, "your place might just be the right place for it to grow."
"Ok, I'll try," I said without enthusiasm. I brought it home, wrapped in a plastic sheet at the bottom of my travel bag. I looked at the rhizome. It didn't look much. It had that wizened, haggard, dried-up look. But there were two almost imperceptible buds that were so subtly fresh in color, so promising in their smallness.
"Listen up, you," I said in a mumbled threat to the rhizome as well as to myself, "you better sprout or else..." I didn't know what came after "or else" anyway. So I planted it in an ordinary tin can and set it on the window sill in the study room, where I could watch it daily, and where it could get outdoor sunlight but be sheltered from sudden changes in temperature and humidity. I watered it when the potting soil seemed too dry, which was perhaps 2x a week.
A week went by. Then a month. Two, three months. Nada.
Maybe it needed more heat. I moved the sleeping tin-can ginger to the kitchen near the stove. Another month. Zilch.
At one time I decorated the tin-can with spray paint, in gay red and green colors, so that it could at least liven up my window sill even without a live plant growing in it. A couple of times I was sorely tempted to just throw the disappointing experiment into the garbage bin.
But an inner voice told me to wait a little longer. The monsoon rains arrived. The ginger rhizome probably sensed the changes in its environment, even though it was indoors, buried in a small tin can in a sheltered room.
Then, one day in September, one of the buds peeped out into a shy pale green sprout. In a few days time, it grew into a six-inch deep green lily-like stem. Then came out a lily-like leaf. Then another. My dormant tin-can darling finally sprouted.
After a few weeks, the other bud came alive too, as a smaller sprout.
In celebration and anticipation, I prepared a much bigger potting bag with a rich composted loam and ash from the fireplace, and carefully replanted there my beloved ginger sprouts. I placed them outdoors, now freely absorbing soft rain and warm sunshine, morning dew and midnight fog.
From another colleague's garden, I brought home a sprig of lemon mint and planted it right beside the ginger sprouts. The mint plant seemed to like the company, and promptly grew new robust sprouts.
So there. My backyard now proudly displays the newest members of its growing multi-racial population: mother ginger sprout, little ginger sprout, and their loyal butler lemon-mint. Say hello to the world, guys!
"Hello, world!"
(Disclaimer: This blog is a real-life story about a plant. I wrote it as it really transpired. I will insist that any similarity with any actual persons and events at Soulcast is purely coincidental, unless you want to read between the lines... and I think you do.)
