His talk dealt with the consequences of using chemicals (pesticides, insecticides, fertilizers) which he said was a recent happening in the world. He stressed the need to return to organic farming which he said was the only sensible way of farming. He also spoke about the role of earthworms as friends of the farmer.
Many questions followed. Most of these dealt with problems people faced while gardening at home. Mr Borges in his reply offered practical solutions which he himself had tried out successfully. For example, to the query, "Why does a papaya plant die after flowering?" he suggested building a bund round the base of the plant because water collecting there rots the papaya base stem. In this connection he also spoke of a medicine which he and his colleagues had invented to drastically reduce the diseases which attack papaya. He markets this as "Papaya Cure". By around noon the talk ended and I left for home.
Siolim The plant exhibition at Saligao had given me an idea of what to expect at the next plant festival I attended, which was at Siolim. Here I took an active part thanks to the invitation I received from Alexyz, the well known Goan cartoonist, who was in charge of the Siolim Plant Festival called "Green Heritage". Green Heritage was started by Alexyz and his friends a few years ago and it has proved to be an enormous success with people eagerly awaiting the event each year.
I woke up early on the morning of August 11th, 1995 and pedalled away to Siolim, which is a picturesque village across the hill from Parra. I found myself sitting at Alexyz's doorstep much earlier than expected. Alexyz and his wife Tecla arrived home in time for lunch. After lunch, I hopped on the back of Alexyz's Kinetic Honda and we set off to visit the homes of all those participating in the exhibition, informing them to keep their exhibits ready for us to collect the next day.
I woke up on the 12th morning to the sound of Alexyz's gibberish much like scatman's scat. "Come on man, let's get going", he yelled. He was a college friend of my parents and he is one of the funniest people I know. Just being in his company is one big laugh!
Our task that morning was to collect the plant exhibits from the homes of all those on our list. The tempo arrived at 9.30 a.m. We covered the base of the tempo with shrubs to act as cushions for the potted plants. We had a long list of homes to visit. Each time we picked up an item for the exhibition we tagged and numbered it so we would know the correct house to return the pot to later. We had to be careful at some houses otherwise we might have ended with torn pants ripped up by the huge Dobermans people owned.