Charlie is called Giant Taro, Elephant Ear or Alocasia - grow everywhere in south east Asia very strong can thrive in any tough environment. We killed it by putting Charlie in the death corner of our living room. First Dragon (leaves dropped nonstop for about 6 month followed by root rot), second Non-name (attacked by mealy bugs then Joey's aggressive bug elimination measure - he is now looking like a plastic plant after we spray him with insecticide which we vow never to use again), now third Charlie.
I smell the funny rotting smell for a long time thinking that must be just the worm farm but last Saturday morning we found the huge trunk of Charlie near the soil is totally soft. Where ants have built a colony and mealy bug infested the leaves at the same time. We moved Charlie away from the death corner to the balcony and Jon convinced me we have to deal with Charlie now.
Charlie is almost 6 feet tall with a 30 cm diameter trunk - how to get him into the garbage bag with the contaminated soil is really a problem. We need a saw and hammer - I ran into the kitchen and found Mum's meat cleaver (when we first moved in, that's Mum's gift to us) and handed the cleaver to Jon, he then used it to chop up Charlie into pieces that can be bagged and chunked into the garbage bins. Including the soil - we are not sure what has caused Charlie's death.
I insisted to tip the garbage lady, she came around every day 10 pm, we ambushed her trying to give her some money for her extra work - she refused to take the money which makes me really uncomfortable. Jon thinks it would be ok if we tip her at end of the year - maybe it is enough to let her know we appreciate her work :-(
It is rather sad to see Charlie go, we probably will get some police attention if this blog titled as "We lost a family member and we chopped it up into pieces with the meat cleaver Mum gave us as the house warming gift and the garbage lady is the accomplice".
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