Over the fence from the house behind
came the vine’s great swathes
covered with large grape vine leaves
…….. but no bunches of grapes.
The maintenance man for the other
flats looked over the back fence
said its back posts were rotten.
After that I pushed the wandering
vines back over the fence
or cut them off together.
After several years in my flat two
wet summers following wet winters
released the vine from summer drought
dryness. It surged over the fence again
this summer bringing a rash of single
green buds, some ballooning into large
ungainly prickly green things … choko !
Yurk ! Not a bunch of grapes !
Just tasteless textureless colourless
choko needing chutney or relish
to make it tolerable to eat.
“No flavour or texture !” said
my neighbour in the next flat.
“What a waste of a plant !”
Choko? Is it a plant that lives in New Zealand? I tried one year to grow grapes …thought the green leaves would be lovely against a reddish fence I inherited. Alas …No grapes but long tendrils that seem to squeeze the life out of adjacent plants…Almost like a boa constrictor…Now I have a Wisteria that is doing the same thing…I had a flowering vine like plant that would attack my back door with such vigor it was almost like it wanted to visit me inside…
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I think it comes from south east Asia, but would need to google it to be sure. You are not missing anything.
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