Gep giaow mak mai sai mai tao

Tree poking in action

At the risk of sounding like my literary pretensions are soaring too high, I feel like the giant from the Oscar Wilde story. 

I’ve been studiously ignoring the children clambering over my garden railings and poking sticks into the trees all evening.  I couldn’t care less if they take the unripe fruits and fibrous seedpods, as they’re not really to my taste but I do wish they’d do it quietly while I try to watch my Great British Bake Off download. 

People in Laos are frequently poking sticks in trees.  I can barely walk past a tree without seeing a stick being poked in it.  On my way to work this morning I noticed someone sitting on the back of a motorcycle waving a comically large stick alarmingly close to some power cables.  No doubt they were on their way to poke a tree.  I am mesmerised by the incredible feats of dexterity some people can achieve with their tree poking and can only assume there is some link between the seemingly innate ability of a Lao person to poke a tree and the surprising popularity of snooker.  Even in really quite remote places I’m forever stumbling across snooker tables.  Earlier in the year I stopped at a roadside snooker hall for a drink and decided that it might be fun to have a quick game.  My friend and I were already a little ‘refreshed’ and so I asked the proprietor in my best Lao if we could play at the nearest free table.  “I don’t understand”, she said in return.  If she didn’t understand what I was asking for, then I dread to think what she thought my accompanying mime was all about. 


Unmolested trees in my garden

They use too few red balls for it to be proper snooker but that could explain why they call it sa-nooker.  Perhaps the extra vowels are to make up for the missing balls.  I’m still rubbish at it but then I don’t have the years of tree poking experience to fall back on.         

I recently had some friends to stay and on returning from a weekend trip one of them was surprised to find a couple rooting through the undergrowth in the garden.  “Er, Susan, there’s a girl in the garden.  In the garden there’s a girl”.  He didn’t say that but I wish he had.  I sometimes say it to myself¹.   In actual fact it was my lovely landlord and his wife, doing a spot of gardening.  They must have got through the gap in the gate because everything was locked up and for some strange reason, they don’t have a set of keys.  I’m quite glad they don’t have a set of keys because they do tend to turn up unexpectedly, normally quite early on a Saturday morning and with a crowd of relatives in tow.



Fruit seedling production - can't spot any grafting.

I’ve stopped being surprised at finding folk wandering around the garden, taking things.  The youngsters are normally incredibly polite and always ask first, although this evening they are poking a stick into a tree from next door’s garden, so I assume they asked next door rather than me, probably because I am ostensibly ignoring them.  I did also have one occasion where I was making a call home and trying to maintain a conversation with my Dad, while being shouted at from 50 yards away by about 7-8 kids who wanted to collect flowers.  Considering both my Dad and I are hard of hearing, it wasn't easy and no demonstrations of being busy/on the phone could dissuade them and my arm gestures signalling ‘help yourselves’ were clearly misinterpreted.  I must work on my mime skills, they’re obviously rubbish.

Despite this incident, I generally find the kids are more inclined to ask permission than the adults, who will happily help themselves to edible fungi, fruits, flowers firewood etc, as and when they want it.  I came back to the house one day to find an entire tree missing.  It was a dead tree and the one that the kids used to like climbing in, so it sort of helps with my earlier giant analogy but it was still a bit of a surprise.

Feeble attempt at tree poking²

We don’t do much tree poking at home.  I’ve been trying to think of examples from the fruit industry of potential commercial applications for tree poking in Europe.  To be honest, I think using grafts onto dwarfing rootstock and then maybe using a ladder or scissor lift/cherry-picker to reach the higher branches may well be a more practical solution but with fewer trickle down benefits to the world of bar games.  From a professional perspective, I also think it’s probably a bit better for fruit quality to not prod it too much, if you can avoid it.  I think I’ll save the debate about dwarfing rootstocks for another day though, as the youngsters seem to be finally dispersing back to their own gardens.  

1. If you haven’t seen ‘Shaun of the Dead’, you really should watch it.  Then watch the director’s commentary.  After that 4 hour stint, my quote should make perfect sense and you will also have had a delightful afternoon.  
2. I know the tree looks like it has a concrete trunk but that's only because an electricity meter is in the way of the actual trunk and if you're wondering who I remind you of, it's the mushroom one from the Super Mario games.