Winter On The Island - No Time To Be Lazy!

Yes...winter. A time for hot chocolate (maybe) and lazing around (not quite). The cats like the cooler nights and hot days and find time for lazing around but for people it is time to harvest and clean up the yard and paint and seal the roof and everything else you can't do when it rains. There really are seasons here and it is winter. Finally the Hobo tree has finished dropping fruit down the driveway and finally the leaves have dropped. Let the clean up begin!

There are now 11 more chicks on the property. I have slowly been relocating gallos y gallinas from the yard. None of them are ours - they have all come here from somewhere else. I don't feed them but they jump for our bananas and are comical to have around until they crow. Right now there are still 4 roosters and we'd like that to be one...Big Red. So part of my day is trying to entice the males into a cage for relocation.

Blanco has been hanging around a lot in his own bedroom, on the platform in the tree and on my lap. Now, after 2 weeks, he is off on an adventure and we haven't seen him for a couple days. They do that.

The Carambola tree had 100 fruit on it so we shared with friends, dehydrated some, made carambola pudding and bread and just ate some. Now I can clean up the rotten ones. Tuca has been snoozing during the daytime. The parcha is finished for a while.

Mini has started to hang out all day and night in her basket or cat bed. She is getting friendlier.

When you have bananas you have hundreds and then nothing for a while. Why do all the bananas fruit around the same time? Dehydrating and freezing are ways to use them so they don't go to waste. Don't want to waste these tasty manzanas... Rip hangs out in his little tent, under bushes or on the cool floor.

I picked the slim harvest of oranges. We are so spoiled to have all this fresh, free fruit. Sometimes we take it for granted. The Heliconias are blooming and will be colorful for a couple months at least.

Now is the time to put plants out. Here I've got the vining spinach (we don't like it that much unfortunately) and eggplant starts. These are the peppers I planted but I don't remember what kind - surprise surprise.

Our first pineapple! Hopefully the other two will produce something soon. We have a few pomegranites...

Here's a photo of the whole pomegranate shrub/tree. There are some corazones getting plump. Lately the birds have gotten to them before we spot them.

It looks like my lime tree will be producing fruit this year. I have a bigger tree that isn't doing anything (no fruit or blossoms yet) but this one smells so good and fruit will be a bonus!

All year I look at the ratty trinitaria (bougainvillea) and think about ripping it out...and then it blooms! Beautiful, unnatural colors cover the hill coming up the drive.

So that's winter in the Caribbean. The light switch switched one day and it became dry, things start to lose leaves or bloom and it is time for major yard clean-up! For the cats it is a time to snooze during the day, run around wild in the wind and snuggle close at night!