Chile Habanero

Pictured above is a typical branch of the habañero chile that our former tenant Nacho planted several months ago.  It seems to have about 30 chiles growing in various stages at any given time.  Most everyone is familiar with the habañero chile, especially those who live in the Yucatán, where most of the crop is grown.  I've noticed that many Mexicans who aren't Yucatecan shy away from it, saying it's just too hot.  Evidently we habañero eating residents of the area like to sweat, because if we're not sweating to 100+°F air temperatures, we're sweating through our cochinita or lechón taquitos loaded with fresh salsa.  I am, anyway.

On my daily revision of the edible plants in the garden, I noticed the chile below on the same plant pictured above.  It skipped orange and turned itself the brightest red.  Our know-it-all store owner on the corner told me it is a hybrid habañero, and that I should be sure to plant the red seeds.  When I looked up habañeros, they come in more colors than I'd imagined.  I've seen green, yellow and orange habañeros, but never bright red.  One type of habañero is called Red Savina and is much hotter than a regular one. I got tired of researching my harvested habañero, so the bottom line is it could just be a red habañero or it could be the hottest one on the bush. 

I just decided to quit horsing around....I bit into it.  It tastes like a delicious sweet red capsicum!  It is leaving just a hint of heat on my lips, but nothing like a regular habañero....the orange ones have been hot!! hot!! hot!! This sweet red one will be the perfect addition to the potato salad I plan to make when 'la banda' is finished with their dinner.

Meanwhile the larger Guatemalan chile bush is still spitting out little red bombs by the hundreds.  I have to harvest at least once a week.  I've managed to dehydrate the first batch and grind them.  I like to mix the fresh ground red pepper with black peppercorns, allowing me to spice up food to my liking without making anyone else suffer.  I like my pepper hot.   These pictured below are sort of like chile máax - in Mayan, which is chile tepín, or is it piquín? Since no one has been certain what this chile is, I call them Huehuetenango Cherry Bombs! 

Back in 1912 William Scoville created a scale rating the heat of chiles.  Below is a partial list of chiles and their ratings.

Scoville rating   -    Type of pepper

15,000,000–16,000,000 Pure capsaicin
8,600,000–9,100,000 Various capsaicinoids (e.g., homocapsaicin, homodihydrocapsaicin, nordihydrocapsaicin)

5,000,000–5,300,000 Law Enforcement Grade pepper spray, FN 303 irritant ammunition

855,000–1,075,000 Naga Jolokia (ghost chili)

350,000–580,000 Red Savina habanero

100,000–350,000 Guntur Chilli, Habanero chili,Scotch Bonnet Pepper,Datil pepper, Rocoto, African Birdseye, Madame Jeanette, Jamaican Hot Pepper

50,000–100,000 Bird's eye chili/Thai Pepper/Indian Pepper, Malagueta Pepper, Chiltepin Pepper, Pequin Pepper

30,000–50,000 Cayenne Pepper, Ají pepper, Tabasco pepper, Cumari pepper (Capsicum Chinese)

10,000–23,000 Serrano Pepper

2,500–8,000 Jalapeño Pepper, Guajillo pepper, New Mexican varieties of Anaheim pepper, Paprika (Hungarian wax pepper), Tabasco Sauce

500–2,500 Anaheim pepper, Poblano Pepper, Rocotillo Pepper, Peppadew

100–500 Pimento, Peperoncini

0   No significant heat,     Bell pepper, Aji dulce

Enough about chiles.  The pitaya plant willing its way over the wall flowered again.  The last flowering, a month ago, as beautiful as it was, was fruitless.  We had so much rain the never had a chance.  It's a cactus, after all.  These three look like they may have potential.  After last week's deluge, the rainy afternoons have subsided for now. 



Ropero Closers

What the heck?

It's a ropero closer, Mokito!

When a friend of mine moved away from Mérida, she gifted me the above ropero (armoire).  She gave me keys for it, but not the actual keys for THIS ropero.  One side is locked shut, and the other side doesn't close at all.  It swings open.  I thought I'd use my macrame skills to create a ropero closer.  The first one I made fell apart before I got the photo taken, and the dreamweaver replacement below might have been made after too long a day of macrame-ing..  I might have to change it again. 

Here is a photo of the second one I made.  Merida Mikey loved my prototype and said his ropero doors swing open all the time too. So I made one for him and gave it to him this morning.  He sent me this photo of it on its new home. 

The first macrame project I started recently was new window pulls for the tall windows in the front living rooms.  The beads are those we found at the elderly Lenca Indian woman's home in La Calma, Honduras, and later painted.  When I first moved in I made pulls using plastic beads and thin wire and they didn't pass the test of time.  That inspired me to make new solid pulls out of strong jute-like material.  Below is an up close shot of the simple swirl knot and the colorful beads. 

Here's a pic of  the window wearing it's new ornament.  After making two of these the ropero closer idea occurred to me.  There are still more beads, so I think I will replace the tall ceiling fan extender pulls....in the same style. 

The Stick and Grow Garden

Another of my favorite gardening techniques is to stick something in the ground and hope it grows. Maybe I should change the name...it's not much different from the throw and grow concept, except with this method I dig a hole with my mini-shovel and just stick my hope in the ground.

Plumeria (flor de mayo, frangipani) is the easiest.  You can simply break off a branch from a healthy - even flowering tree - and stick it in the ground. This one looks pathetic, but check out the determination of this cutting!  The flowers and new leaves are desperately trying to reach for the sky, while the older blooms don't seem to understand why they had to undergo surgery in the first place.  What's important is....it's growing! And it's the rainy season.

In Hawaii, they bag and sell six inch cuttings to tourists who dream of enjoying the sweet scent of the flower at home in their backyards in Kansas.  Most of those pieces don't survive in colder climates, but snipping a stick from one side of the wall and planting it on the other in the tropics is almost a sure bet.  I'll concede the cutting doesn't appear to be real happy about its relocation. For now.  Give it some adjustment time. We overflow the pool a lot and it'll get watered regularly.

Many succulents are perfect for stick and grow.  Everything in the pot below was just stuck in there.  It may be time to remove the overpowering plant and stick in a few smaller cuttings.  It's growing out of control. I don't know what this plant is, but it could easily overtake your property if you aren't careful. It multiplies faster than bunnies or cockroaches. But check out the stick cactus. It's great stuff.  My friend Mike gave me a sizable cutting last year, and it's been stuck all over the property since.  It's nearly impossible to kill and gives an eclectic look to any succulent arrangement.

This old sink is home base for the stick cactus, I take cuttings from this now misshapen plant to electicize the rest of the garden!  In front of it is another sad example of the plumeria we trimmed from the neighbor's tree. We didn't go out and steal flor de mayo branches, although I have done that after too much wine in Hawaii.... The blooms falling from the abandoned property next door into the pool gave it a Balinese feel, but they'd start to rot by the side of the pool and that ruined the effect. So we cut the bugger back.

Pineapple is always fun. In Hawaii, Maxine grew the absolute best white pineapples and always gave me plenty. I got into the habit of planting every pineapple top.  After a couple of years I had quite the crop of my own.  Here I have had trouble with soil, but the zen garden seems to work for this one. 

For me the miracle of all stick and grow is the poinsettia pictured below.  I dutifully cut back our other poinsettia plants (that Pablo successfully transformed from Christmas containers to beautiful flowering bushes two years ago.)  One of them needed to be evened out, and I cut a few good sized branches.  Below is the result of that cutting and the branch I stuck in the ground in April.

I haven't ever been able to transplant a poinsettia, let alone get one to grow from a stick. I didn't even have Root Tone!  If it flowers it will be the miracle Christmas flower. From the size of it, I'd better wait until next year before I get too excited about blooms.

The Throw and Grow Gardener

I’ve never been much of a gardener. My best garden was in Akumal, when I lived on Yalku Lagoon in the early 80’s. The soil was very sandy, so plant choices were limited. I worked 7 days a week, so I hired my first (ever) gardener. He planted cilantro, green onions, little tomatos, and chiles, plants that would grow in the sand. I loved making salsa right out of the garden!

That was the last real garden I had. Once we moved to Hawaii, I became a throw and grow gardener. If I could clear some weeds to expose the beautiful black volcanic dirt, throw some seeds into the ground and watch them grow,  I’d succeeded. I always planted some chile seeds, usually piquín or tepín, typical to Hawaii, and they thrived. Spearmint grew voluntarily as ground cover in the front yard of our coffee shack. Every pineapple top I planted grew and gave us fruit. I once tossed two squash down into the lower level on our hillside and the result could have been horror movie theme. I thought the vines were going to take over the house. I had so many squash I didn't know what to do.  Throw and grow had backfired!  It did so again when I threw and grew some cherry tomatoes. They also thrived in uncontrollable overabundance. 

When I finally tried to make an enclosed garden in Hawaii I had to move giant lava rocks around and build a little wall to accommodate the dirt. Like the Yucatán, when it rains there is pours and washes away the topsoil.  As I was nearly finished stacking the rocks, one fell on my finger and through the suede gloves and all, my fingertip popped open like a grape. That was the official end of gardening for me there.

Here in Mérida, the patio has slowly taken shape with a nice and sometimes colorful array of plants. I have my zen garden, which currently has only decorative plants. The cactus/succulent garden is bizarre and it's fun to watch it take shape.  But the coup de gras is the chile bush in the back yard.

The chiles are similar to what the Mayans call chile maáx, (mah-ahsh)…we brought some with us from Guatemala and applied the throw and grow technique. There are actually two thick stems but the two chile bushes grew up together and are the cheeriest bunch of chiles I’ve ever seen.

There is an habanero plant next to them that enjoys the company and has begun to put out some beautiful chiles also. I'd better mention that the habanero was introduced to our garden as a little plant, it's not a throw and grow. This one takes some extra attention, but it's worth it.

I threw some basil seeds around.

The first basil bush was magnificent – not only for pesto sauce and cooking in general, but the flowering basil wafted aromatic waves past us while we were in the swimming pool. Eventually the plant got too old and I pulled it, threw new seeds in the area and covered them with a little layer of dirt. There are going to be plenty of basil plants this season, as you can see from the photo above.

I have been enjoying working outside in the little gardens around the property. My garden areas are small enough for me to take on in sections...and I'm happy to work with the throw and grow method again - with some success. 

Plant Life in the Patio

The hollyhock is still flowering after several months.  It continues to bud deep wine colored flowers. The white petunias are still flowering and the purple petunia my neighbor gifted me is also in bloom.  We trashed the basil after it spread from the garden to the sidewalk.  What you see above and below is the NEW basil that has grown up in its place.  It smells delicious from inside the swimming pool.  It's almost time to collect a new large ziplock bag full of seeds.  Anyone needing basil, I have lots of seeds to spare.

Then there are the confused poinsettias.  Here they are called Noche Buena, or Christmas Eve (flowers), because that is when they usually bloom.  I remember lots of poinsettia in Hawaii.  Their leaves turn red in November and they flower around Christmas. The season is the same here, except for this year.  We never really had our rainy season last summer, and by the time rains came they were accompanying cold fronts.  This semi-wet weather pattern started in October and has been hanging on ever since.  The result is our three poinsettia bushes are all abloom and happy in February.  I remember that poinsettia should be pruned in the "A" months...April and August.  But since this is blooming in February, I guess I'll have to rethink the cutbacks for maybe June and Oct. 

One of the plants is dwarfed because for the longest time we had a giant ugly flower taking up its earth and its air space...so it is a bonsai poinsettia this year.  These two were planted from the same size little plant a year ago Christmas.

Cilantro seeds are now planted once a month in a different pot, sharing the atmosphere with another plant.  It is great to pick fresh cilantro as needed, but the plants don't live too long so it's good to keep young ones coming up.  The jalapeños are not pictured here, but they are keeping us in hot chiles.

This is diffenbachia, or dumb cane.  Have you ever seen it flower like this before?  This was a tall plant in the zen garden so I cut and moved most of it out back.  Now it is thriving in both areas.  But isn't this flower reminiscent of a spathiphilium?  The plant has had a couple of these appear already.

Mamey: Up Close and Personal

        I spent most of yesterday trying to upload the photos that follow.  Had I done my homework I would have realized that not only had I wanted to write about this tree, but in fact I already did.  Here:  The first MAMEY post.  That didn't stop me, not after spending the entire day working on this piece.  

This is the big picture.  This tree provides shade from the brutal summer sun, live entertainment for anyone sitting in the patio, a bridge to "the other side" for the cats, as well as (fingers crossed) edible fruit.  It's been a while since I have been in the swimming pool at all, let alone whiling away the hours thinking, writing and watching the life that abounds in the mamey tree.  The tree definitely brings back fond memories of a more productive time in the water. 

I was surprised to read, in my own blog mind you, that this is an evergreen tree.  Once I stopped to think about it, it not only sheds its leaves twice a year, but I don't remember a stage when it isn't full and green and leafy.  It also grows new flowers as soon as it is finished dropping the load it currently has.  The bees love them.  There always seem to be flowers growing mysteriously on its branches.

The flowers fall off by the thousands, it seems, covering the patio in a fragrant layer of yellow.

The tree makes a huge mess every day, all year long.  And we have yet to harvest one edible fruit.  Walking underneath is reminiscent of being under a coconut tree; you always have to be conscious of the noggin whacker that could drop at any moment.   

It is somewhat of a pain to maintain......but it is a great reminder of the amazing ecosystem that surrounds us. And it stirs up that longing for the good old days of summer.  I may be the only one looking forward to the intense heat, but hey, that's life in the tropics!

This Week in the Patio

Time for a fun blog with some color and flowers. We had a lot of rain the past week or two, as if our rainy season finally blessed us with its presence. I've been wracking my brain with the blogs I am working on, so this is a welcome respite.

I discovered the macro button on my camera this past week. This is a shot of the inside of a flower opening up in the garden today. More on the flower below.

I finally got a good photo of Moka's eyes. This is the first time I captured the bright blue coloration.

Lately we have experienced rainy season-like weather. It is also typical of the northerlies that swing south across the Gulf of Mexico in the winter, but we never had our rainy season this summer, so it was refreshing to have a few days of interspersed sun and rain. They were the coooler raindrops of a cold front instead of the delightful warm tropical rains.

Hurricane Ida slid through the Yucatán Channel last Sunday, amazingly leaving the entire peninsula unscathed. The unstable conditions the entire week before the storm are what brought us several tropical (tropical in this case means HEAVY DUTY)downpours. The passing showers lingered days after the disturbance moved out of our area. It's been extremely humid but also cool. That combination brings out sweatshirts and blankets. When our temperature suddenly dips from 90°F to 70°F, I think about folks living up north. They have harsh cold fronts, and all I can think of is being in a comfortably heated house, at 76°F-80°F. Then gearing up to head outside where it is possibly 50°F or 50°F COLDER, only to reenter a heated car or building again, and of course repeat the cycle all day long. Freeze your ass off, warm up, freeze, warm, etc. Those temperature changes are harsh on the body. No wonder those folks have major flu outbreaks. The body must go into a mild shock several times a day. Maybe I just remember how I felt about going outside when I was little in Ohio. I hated it. (It was ok for playing in the snow all bundled up, but school, family visitations, church, forget about it.) By the time I was in college, in a town called Oberlin located just the right distance from Lake Erie to sweep in the coldest, strongest, "lake effect" winds all winter, I decided one of my goals in life was to forever escape that brutal cold of winter. Looking back, an odd goal, but it steered me out west to the California sunshine, which was where I truly began to learn about the world.

Back to the patio. After all the rain, flowers bloomed, plants shot up in a spurt of rapid growth, including the weeds, of course. We also found new and interesting creatures this past week.

I don't know much about caterpillars, but this white fuzzy one is beautiful. It looks like a huge version of some of the mealy-like bugs eating some of my plants. It reminds me of a nudibranch, a species of underwater animalitos.

This looks just like a stink bug, but it has a bright orange underbelly. Since a regular green stink bug bit me the other day, I decided to leave this guy alone.


White petunias. While we were away two weeks in late September, my housekeeper planted some seeds. These petunias are now flowering prolifically.

This is a chia sprout. I was showing Mike the seeds in the pool and spilled a few. Because the mats were saturated, the seeds sprouted in the cracks. In fact, a variation of sprouts sprung up around the pool area....it was the first time I saw that.

The macro shot toward the top of this post was taken on this plant. This sprouted from seeds the housekeeper brought months ago, at the same time as the giant (ugly and unappreciated) weedlike marigolds,,,or whatever they were. Now that this plant is fully grown, I feel it was worth the wait. It looks like a cross between comfrey and a Christmas tree.

Finally this week, the buds on the tall stem at the top started to bloom, one or two at a time. Below is day one.

Day two. Hmm. Plant blossoms in mid November....looks like a Christmas tree, and is full of bright red flowers. I like it. If the flowers last long enough this is mostly likely going to be the Christmas tree, by the way. Unles we dress up a ficus tree or something.

Today I got this shot. A couple days have passed and buds keep opening. It is getting prettier every day.

I liked something about this picture. Confession: Love flower photos!

So there is it, this week in the patio.

¡Panamá!

Puerto Lindo is on the Caribbean Sea between Portobelo and El Porvenir (on this map).

We left Mérida the morning of September 22nd. After a layover in México City we flew nonstop to Panamá City, landing into an awesome view of the city's skyline at sunset, offering a unique view of both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans at once. We'd booked a hotel in the city in advance online, The Hotel Aramo. It is comforting to arrive with a specific destination, especially a strange city at night. (I've also been known to travel on the fly...without a room or a clue.)


We opted to take the bus into town. We caught an express bus that cost $2.50US. There was another bus we found out about later that cost $.25US. The most popular option is a $30US cab ride. The taxi drivers called out to us that we needed a cab because it wasn't safe to take the bus, but we made it to our hotel on a miraculously direct route in 45 minutes without incident. The hotel was clean, the staff extremely friendly and helpful, there was internet service, and a little restaurant where we were given a continental breakfast the following morning as part of our $37US deal.


If you are heading anywhere considered "outback" in Panamá, which in my opinion would include every province outside Panamá City...the bus schedules often require that you spend a night in town and head out early the next day to make all your connections. The bus routes are plentiful, but complicated, and often services do not run after dark.


In the morning, Pablo schlepped our bags two blocks down a busy avenue to the nearest bus stop, where we boarded a city bus to AlBrook, the main bus terminal. All buses operating in Panamá depart from there. We were northbound to the Caribbean Coast vía the road to Colón. We easily found the Colón Express and within half an hour we were on our way. We had been warned to NOT take the bus all the way into Colón, but "to get off at an intersection with a grocery store called Sabanitas." I had maps, sat by the window, and I tried to see where we were going but the driver was hauling ass and there were no signs. Now and then a sign zoomed by on the other side of the highway, but I couldn't turn around fast enough to catch it. When I saw the first evidence of human habitation; it was a big town. We asked if it was called Sabanitas, our connection stop. It was. From this crucero we had to catch a different bus headed northeast up the coast. The ride hadn't taken as long as I'd anticipated and our ride didn't match the road on the map at all. Anyhow, before the driver flew off toward the danger zone of Colón, we managed to get off the bus with all our belongings. We immediately saw another colorful bus heading to Portobelo and Pablo hailed it. I didn't have time to tell him we were actually looking for a different bus, the Costa Norteña bus, but we were headed off in the right direction. We negotiated a taxi from Portobelo, which was actually a relaxing relief from the hustle of the buses. By noon we pulled into the driveway of Panama Adventures Guest House, met by Annie's smiling face, a hot cup of coffee, and her neighbor/friend.


That afternoon we walked around the fishing village of Puerto Lindo.


We visited the tiendas, the old church, and met some of the local folks.

Then we swam out across the bay for a long snorkel.


That evening we were all contentedly exhausted and just enjoyed sitting on the front porch. We finally made it to Panamá.

Pitaya Flower Close Up

Two more pitaya flowers bloomed the night of the recent full moon. I took some photos at intervals as they opened up, over approximately three hours. The first picture I took just after dark when I noticed the blooms opening.

The flowers open up with the rising full moon.

By morning they are closing up again.

They are such intriguing flowers. They have a sea anemone in the middle!

The bees made the most of the limited treats.

It has been over a week since I took these photos, and both flowers have withered up and fallen to the ground. I have noticed a nasty vine wrapping itself around the pitaya plant on the other side of the wall, but without access to its base to remove the vine, I am afraid it might choke the plant. I just thought I would share these photos. I took the night shots, Pablo caught the early morning shots, complete with busy little bees.