First Pawpaw Harvest

All right, PAPAYA.  I just like the word 'pawpaw', it's South Pacific equivalent. My tropical cookbook from Fiji has great recipes: pawpaw slaw, pawpaw seed salad dressing, lote, mousse, fresh green pawpaw pickle, and mango pawpaw punch, to name a few.  There are some creative uses for papaya and I was thrilled to harvest the first ripe fruits today.   Below is a photo of the tree, growing in the front patio, from what may have been sunrise papaya seeds from Guatemala, or not. 

They are huge and have been ripening fast.

Pablo stood on the ladder and used the new weapon we created:  a strong kitchen knife well-taped to an old squeegee pole...not too tall but effective for now. Look how beautiful this fruit is!

Sorry, I forgot to take a photo of one cut into thirds because it was so sweet and delicious it just didn't occur to me!  We got caught up in the moment! 


This week I have to get back out into the yard and finish cleaning up the garden areas.  The cilantro below is flowering and will soon go to seed. Must stay on top of that.  My project these past few weeks has been to add dirt to the perimeter of the yard where we try to grow things.  The dirt washes away and all that's left is a shallow bed of tierra and lots of limestone rocks.  The plants are very happy with their new beautiful black dirt.

I think tiny flowers are interesting, they are so intricate and delicate.  These are the cilantro flowers. I'll try to get some closeups and maybe post them another day with the rosemary flowers from last week. 



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. 

A Mérida Day in May

The temperature reads 102°F.  It's 3pm.  I'm half in, half out of the swimming pool reading and writing.  On top of the tall cement wall sits a three foot iguana.  We are familiar with each other.  I like to watch him look at the mamey tree.  He turns his head from side to side as if wondering how to get at that fruit.  I think he looks at me with scorn because the branch - THE access branch - was sawed off to raise the wall three years ago. He will have to search the ground for fallen fruit instead. 

I hear him eventually saunter away over the broken glass protectors and flop on to the tin roof next door.  He doesn't move gracefully, but he is a beautiful creature.  He isn't the only iguana around either, but I think he's 'da man'..

I hear a bird making all kinds of racket.  His are odd noises, as if he is imitating other birds, cats fighting, or a rooster crowing.  I can't see him, he's up in the giant Batfruit Tree next door, which is growing a huge new batch of bat fruit seeds.  Sometimes I whistle back at noisy bird and we banter.  Then he laughs at me for being a lousy whistler and he flies away.

I look up into the sky.  Lately a hawk has been hovering over the hood.  He makes several passes swooping low enough to just get a look at his white head.  When the birds have moved on, the plant life wakes up.  The mamey tree has dropped the last of the leaves, the patio is all cleaned up, and now the fruit hits the cement like coconut bombs.  The new bright yellow leaves sprouting from the tips of the empty branches create a beautiful contrast against the bluest sky. 

There is a hot breeze today.  I  set up shop in the shady section of the pool where my body feels cool and the hot winds take my senses down  tropical memory lane. This helps me recreate parts of the past I am attempting to describe in writing. I can hear occasional traffic passing, buses farting, cars honking, brakes screeching, loudspeakers blaring political messages; but it is not a constant or loud noise.  It is just enough activity to remind me that THEY are out there suffering in the heat while I sit here and enjoy my interactions with nature, nurture myself in the cool aquatic medium, and write and rewrite the beginning of the sail story.  I may have written the opening paragraphs fifty times so far, but I feel like I am making great progress. How hopeful and positive is that?  I am am applying what I am relearning in the book ON WRITING WELL by William Zinsser.  It seems to make much more sense to me the second time around.  I have stopped overwhelming myself, and that is a great feat for me.

I don't write this to brag about my life.  I have so much self-doubt at times I think I should be on antidepressants. I suffered writer's block all winter, perhaps because I was also stressed about finances.  The warmer season awakens me, and once I am back on track exercising, feeling healthier and toting a little color, my confidence strengthens, and everything else seem to fall into place.    I think I have gotten real about the writing, am enjoying the intense heat, seeing people enjoy the pool, and life just moving along.  It's just another  Mérida day in May.

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.

Marigolds - Never Again

Several months ago my housekeeper brought me some flower seeds. She said there were two different kinds of pretty flowers, and that they would only bloom once, so it would be important to harvest their seeds. I picked some random areas in the patio and planted some. They sprouted quickly, and grew like weeds. In fact, they were very weedlike and downright unsightly. Before we knew it a few of them were nearly six feet tall. Finally after what seemed an eternity, they sprouted flowers and lots of buds appeared.

They were colorful marigolds and the butterflies liked them. Were they worth waiting five months or more for them?

The general concensus was that this would be their only appearance in the garden. I tried to let them go to seed but Mother Nature interfered (or simply solved the problem).

They were so tall they got top heavy. And with a bit of wind and an afternoon rainstorm, gravity got the best of them and they went down. All the way to the ground.


You can see them leaning here. I didn't get outside quickly enough to get a shot of them on the ground. Pablo had always seen them as an intrusion to our lovely garden. He was the happiest of all to see them go... he cut them down as soon as they bit the dust.

And the other seeds, you might wonder? They are still growing giant leaves. They look more like comfrey than a flower. Maria called them barra de San Jose, which means nothing to me. I am interested to see what they are, and really, how much longer can it take before they decide to flower? This is the largest one, and the one most improperly planted, because it has stunted the growth of the noche buena (poinsettia) behind it. The noche buena will probably make it, but it is dwarfed next to its two relatives , barely visible behind the non-flowering plant.

A Tropical Afternoon Rain

This is a portion of the patio on a partly cloudy day.

We are outside in the pool, enjoying a bit of sunshing and occasional relief of some passing clouds. Out of the blue we hear the sky roar. Thunder. We have to search to find the approaching cumulonimbus cloud. Sometimes there are many, coming from several directions. A high percentage of these afternoon rainstorms begin with a whipping wind. Within seconds the patio will look like this: (The cats like the maze it creates.)

The wind swirls around in the patio and churns up the mats that cover the cement surface. If we have a little advance warning, we anchor them down with bricks or plants. But these storms often surprise us, leaving us mere seconds to cover the pool and gather our asundry items to make it inside without getting pounced by pitchforks of rain.

If multiple clouds join up, the rain seems to last forever. It might only be half an hour, but it comes down so heavy in sideways sheets it floods the entire patio. The mats float around and leaves the yard like this. Often the mess includes several downed leaves and branches. This is just one of many surprises that can cause a change of plans during a tropical afternoon.

Succulents and the Zen Garden

This is one of the permanent planters at the corners of the pool. Below are stick cactus, jade plant and two Mayan gods from Copán protecting them. The geranium that used to live here didn't make it.

I am still working with the Zen garden (and catbox). While the backyard has more fruit and flowery plants, it also has Pablo, who enjoys his meditation time watering the plants when rain is not abundant. I take care of the little front patio. Therefore the plants must be of the ‘throw and grow’ variety, or very low maintenance.

The Zen garden has gone through several changes since its creation. The ti plant, papaya tree, sago, diffenbachia (dumb cane), philodendron, and the palm tree are doing great. The sand, pounded nearly into cement by the harsh rains, no longer interests the cats as a place to relieve themselves. The driftwood and canoe are happy there. The two plants in the hubcaps are surrounded by seashells and river rocks; you can hardly see them.

The plants have changed a bit since the first attempt. I planted some melon seeds and they rapidly spread. But there was a sweet potato (camote) sprouting in the hanging basket in the kitchen, so I buried it in the Zen garden. It seems to be stronger than the melons and may just win out. I like vines, but only the kind I know I'll be able to control later. This is a small area and they can’t take over like the throw and grow squash that consumed our property in Kona one year. I really made a bad decision tossing one innocent squash in front of our coffee shack. We had squash growing up the side of the house. (Ok, that is an exaggeration.)

We recently brought one spider lily home from the beach. They can grow in lousy soil, and they flower all the time. They have only a faint scent, but the white flowers can add dimension to an arrangement or cheer to the Zen garden. Once they start spewing seeds, I will have to be watchful. This is another plant I had experience with in Hawaii. In the long run I like spider lilies around me, I just have to keep up with removing the seeds. This one pictured above looks sad, but it will revive itself once it's familiar with its Zen-ness.

The spearmint in the pot below didn’t survive my watering plan, which is basically rainfall. But I have hope for the Serrano chiles planted in here now, as several seeds have sprouted and it is the rainy season. The light green vines are the sweet potato.

Below is the melon vine. There is some aloe vera hiding behind it and a few other things. Oh, and the chayote that grew in the frig. I thought I'd see what happens to it in the throw and grow garden.

Along the wall in the carport I planted a variety of succulents. We brought some nopal home one day, and some of the cuttings have sprouted interestingly shaped arms. It reminds me of one nopal I had in Kona a long time ago that grew little arms and a little head, and we put a little hat on him that came on a tequila bottle. Ah tequila memories….

Here I am with my pet cactus, Pancho, in 1989, in Kona, Hawaii.

I spread out some mother-in-law's tongues along the lengthy narrow garden. I had lots of them in Kona, and after a while they were like weeds. Once you plant one you can’t get rid of them. But they are very low maintenance and they look good.

There are lots of jade bush cuttings. The planters in the back patio are supposed to be bonsai, but they grow so fast! There is one more little cactus mixed in here. One day I bought a plant from a little Mayan lady downtown for ten pesos. The day I brought it home was the day the succulent garden took its shape and all its components were assembled. I think it looks pretty cool. Not too bad for a throw and grow low maintenance gardener.

You can see below that the pineapple plants have not embraced their location. This is one of two that look pekid. They are alive and have a Mayan god to aid them in their search for chlorophyll or whatever it is they are lacking. I think they look good in the giant planters that square off the pool, especially with their flowering miniature succulents.