Avocado

One of the good things about Gardening in the tropics is that you can garden all year 'round.  When the post office opened after the passage of Hurricane Maria the first thing I received were some seeds from Spring and Doug Norman.  All the tomato seeds germinated (planted October 21) and   I was able to give some seedlings away.  They are bearing now. 

Before the Hurricane I had planted, in pots, 2 large avocado seeds.  They were sprouting nicely on my veranda.  Then Maria hit.  She brought down a piece of twisted galvanized roof on them, but the piece got caught on the wall and so sheltered them. The day after the storm  I climbed over someone's old wet mattress and broken furniture that had been deposited on the veranda  to rescue them .  The leaves were torn, I nursed them, and they survived. One of them was a big, creamy, purple avocado. By December I saw that the roots were coming out of the bottoms of the pots. They had to go into the ground.  Usually we would take them up to McDowell's farm and plant them but the road is still clogged and not easily passable so I thought I would plant them in the back yard behind the old house.

Well, I didn't plant them myself.  I couldn't lift the pots, and I wasn't sure how close to the Bay I could put them, so I went into the Bar to find someone who could carry them for me.   There was a little old gnarled farmer from Pennville, (a garden gnome actually, big ready smile and one tooth, lower right) who was happy to follow me into the yard.  He found a huge dasheen plant behind the house that Maria had planted, fix it up, took its sprouts and put them in the ground, saying, "Oh, look, she has babies, I will plant them for you".  Now I have 3 dasheen.  Anyhow he quickly dug holes for the avocado trees (avocado are called pear), explaining why he choose to put them where he did. "Don't do anything (duh do nuffin')" was his advice, "She knows best".   Then he stood back, looked at them and said to me in a very serious voice, "She will be sad for 2 days because she doesn't know where she is now.  We moved her, but then she will find herself and stand up straight."

Dasheen

Avocado - 1 meter high. Will bear in 7 years

Tomato - I have a dozen plants

We have almond trees growing like weeds in the back.  His pronouncement on them was, "Dey doh give no profit, dey belongs on de beach".  True , but they do provide wonderful shade.  When the beach gets cleared up we will put some there.

This almond tree was 5 feet tall before Maria.  The hurricane cut it down, It is now 2 feet and will soon be tall and wide spread.  The bare tree behind is a St Peter's Tree (Flamboyant) and will be flaming red at the end of June.