Earlier in the week we stopped by a nursery and wandered around looking at all the beautiful flowers and edible plants that we would someday like to have around the property. It turns out that a lot of the plants need shade to grow or are vines that need shade and a host tree to thrive, just so happens we have both. Currently the nursery did not have any vanilla bean vines or cinnamon trees, but they did have some black pepper vines. The pepper vines were about 6′ long and we were told that they should start producing very soon, so we grabbed a couple plants since we go through a lot of black pepper. These plants when mature should provide us and everyone we know with more than enough fresh black peppercorns.

It turns out that the caretaker where we were staying is really into plants, we told him what we were doing, so he loaded us up with more plants and clippings from his own garden. He gave us Oregano, a Cocoa tree plus a few others that we usually call house plants such as Coleus, Caladium and others. Ruben was very excited about the Cocoa tree and wasted no time finding the perfectly protected shady spot for it. We also put in another pineapple top and a bunch of ginger root. We will be back down there in two months to check and see how everything is growing.

We figure if we start getting some plants in now, then by  the time we actually get there they will be thriving. Most of them will require very little care if any, and if they do Ruben will be there to take care of them. Every trip down we will be hitting up the nurseries to see what special plants they might have. Our goal is to have all different kinds of plants and spices that you can just walk out and pick when needed.

Besides all the plants we are putting in there is a variety of wild edible plants just growing all around the property. There are wild papaya, wild plum, mushrooms, dragon fruit, passion fruit, cohune nuts, allspice and a bunch of others that we have yet to find. And besides that the property next to us has a banana plantation and the guy across the way is planning on planting a bunch of mango trees. Once we are there we might not even need to go to the market for produce.

Finally we had a chance to look at the pictures we pulled off of the trail cam. Looks like most of the same animals as last time were still wandering by the camera. There were Margays, Anteaters, Coatis, Pacas, Armadillos, Agoutis and even a Manatee. Kidding about the Manatee, just wanted to keep you on your toes.

This time there was also a fox that we hadn’t seen before and a big squirrel that must have come down the tree every single day just to have his picture taken. It’s great to see that some of these seem to be resident animals, hopefully they will still stay around once we are there.

We put another trail camera up in a different area of the property this time in hopes of capturing some other types of animals that might be roaming around. The camera used to be strapped to the tree with a  Velcro strap, making it fairly easy to find. The strap has been replaced by a metal lock box screwed to a tree. It’s a good thing our regular camera gives you a GPS of where each picture was taken. We took a picture of the trail cam box so next time it should be very easy to find.