Big Stuff

BIG DESIGN for an insect to make...

BIG BEE flying...

BIG BEE with pollen head...

BIG BEE butt (I'm always talking about big bees and there they are. They wake me up in the morning and that is how I know something nearby is blooming!)

BIG LEAF on the Moralon tree...

BIG SLOPE where the arboretum is taking shape...

BIG PARCHA MOUND on a couple dead stumps...

BIG POT for a small cat...

BIG PUPIL (aka Big Eye or Sci-Fi Eye).

That's it for big stuff today!

Tasty Stuff...

I found this cool grater at the store you love to hate - Marshalls. This is the best tool ever for a lot of things. It has three different sizes you can snap into place. The first thing I made was a Green Mango Salad.


I've been cooking a lot more here in PR than in Washington because I've got too - there isn't much variety of fresh stuff. There is also the game we've got going of eating 3 things from the yard. So here is the latest installment - Green Mango Salad. This is a surprisingly refreshing salad that used 3 things from the yard!

Green Mango Salad
grate 2 green mangoes
1/4 cup grated coconut (toast it)

3 tbsp fish sauce
3 tbsp lime juice
1-2 tbsp brown sugar

1/2 cup chopped basil
1-2 fresh red chillies

3-4 spring onions
chopped nuts - handful

Parcha..

This looks odd but it is more variety and was tasty. It was pork with tomatoes (from the yard) and all kinds of spices like cinnamin, nutmeg and other stuff. Something different.

Edibles

I could hear the bees in the morning and discovered the Quenepa was starting to bloom. One day nothing, and the next all new leaves and flowers! Crazy what a little rain can do.

Finally I've got some swiss chard. Nice healthy leaves without insect damage...yet.

Guineos. It is hundreds or nothing. Looks like it'll be another 3 bunches or so in the next month.

I haven't had much luck with zucchini - they flower, make one fruit and are done. These 3 plants don't even have fruit yet. Even if I only get one I still want it. I'll plant a couple seeds a week until I get the timing right - hard to find in the supermarket and hard to cough up $1.50 a fruit for what you couldn't give away in the states!

Hmmm. My favorite - parcha!

Lots of blossoms and a few fruit already.

This year the fiberless big mangoes are plentiful. Many are way to high, but they only hit on one side when they fall so we eat the other side.

Lots of fiberless mangoes - email recipes! There are too many to just eat plain!

Flores Dos

Ylang ylang is such a weird flower. I've had entire gardens of things that bloomed green (and another of black blooming things). These flowers are very nice smelling, but a little more subtle than I thought they would be (I could have put it closer to the house.)


We have got parcha (passion fruit) blooming again! Hooray! Parcha and quenepas are the only two fruit I can't get enough of! First I bought 3 foot high plants. They gave us fruit that I planted the seeds from. Those plants gave fruit already once and here they are blooming again! Yippee!

Orchids - I don't really know what to do with them so they hang in the Maria Tree neglected. A few times a year I soak them in a dilute orchid fertilizer and before you know it they pop into action!

Another orchid in bloom.

Yet another.

Gandules - Hamilton (previous owner of our house) gave me some gandule seed last year with instructions on planting it with a certain moon phase etc. I planted them into a hedge and typically they all came up and things were crowded. They grew like gangbusters and then had a serious scale infestation. Instead of spraying 4 foot bushes I cut them to the ground and did an oil spray. The plan was to have gandules by xmas, but here they are now on the new growth. The flowers look like little orchids. A lot of people have problems with worms in the peas etc. I haven't popped them open yet to check for that but they look like they will be something different to cook with! (thank you Hamilton)

Fruit and a New Table to Eat it On! Guineos Anyone?

Jeff likes to hang the racemes of guineos from the front tree because it looks cool to see them ripen there. Occasionally we see interested birds pecking at the top ones and know we need to bring them in. The roaming chickens get the pecked ones. So what does one do with this many bananas? Banana bread, banana cake (I have a really good recipe), on top of cereal, if we had a food dryer we'd do that, tostones for green ones, smoothies, the pickled banana thing, banana pancakes, and neighbors. Anyone know what else to do?

These are parcha -- yes, already the size of my hand...from the blossoms I photographed on 5/23! I don't know how big they are gonna get, but they are bigger than any parcha we've eaten already.

Here's our new table and our Washington cat - Dakota - out for a stroll. Chicken Little had a discussion with our fat cat and it offering him protection in exchange for tolerance. They actually kind of like each other. Anyway, the table gives us a way to enjoy the back part of the property. Sometimes there is a bigger breeze there. It is nice to have options of where to be...in front looking at the ridge line, on the balcony looking into the palm and mango, on the bench near "coqui alley" or here...looking at the area-of-possibilities. We still have to adjust the location of one of the benches, but under the Corazone tree is where it will stay. It is cement (and difficult to get in and out of the truck with just two people - one of whom is smallish). Since it is cement we don't have to worry about it flying around, rusting, mildewing, rotting etc. It is totally solid and we love it! I am happy with how they painted it as well.