We had a great time with Randy, Stacy and the grandkids. From exploring the jungle to fun on the beach, every day was a new adventure. But, vacations do have to end. Everyone made it home safely and are settling back into their normal routine. Same goes for us, back to working, tending the garden, trimming the plants and working on all the projects around here.

We always seem to have a steady supply of bananas around here and we try to make good use of them. Of course, banana bread is always one of the favorites and when you add raspberries or pineapple it makes it extra special. The pineapple banana bread and the raspberry banana bread are both delicious, and even better is the fact that they were straight from the garden.

Since the pineapples are all starting to ripen and we recently picked two big bunches of bananas, it was time for Kelley to make some more of her jungle jam. Kelley’s Jungle Jam is made with pineapples, bananas and some coconut. It’s a tropical fruit spread that’s delicious on toast, pancakes, waffles, banana bread, and even peanut butter sandwiches.

When we planted the pineapples we had no idea what we were doing. We just planted them real close and made a big pineapple patch. Well once it came time to pick them we could hardly get to them without getting all cut up because of the very sharp leaves on the plants. So I came up with this pineapple picker. It’s a piece of PVC with a rope through it that forms a loop. Sorta like they use to catch dogs and other animals. This works great, all you do is place the loop around the top of the pineapple and pull. Since that was a lesson learned, we now plant all of our pineapples in rows of not more than two wide so we can actually get to them when it’s time to pick them.

All of our pepper plants are producing pretty well (especially the habaneros) considering they’re not full grown yet. At this point, we have Bells, Banana Peppers, Jalapenos, Habaneros, Cayenne, Bird Peppers and a few more misc.

Besides using them for just everyday cooking we are also dehydrating them to make different seasonings and also fermenting some to make hot sauce. It looks like they should grow till the end of the year, so we should be set on peppers for a while.

There are a lot of beautiful wild tropical plants growing around our property, most of which we have yet to discover. When we find ones we like such as orchids or birds of paradise we will relocate them closer to our house and yard.  One of the plants that we find is a Pheasant Tail that gets up to at least three feet tall. It’s a beautiful big leaf plant that I know I’ve seen in the garden departments in the states.

To our surprise, the Pheasant Tail got a big red bloom that resembles a hummingbird sticking right up the middle. After a quick search on Google, it turns out that these are very easy to propagate from their seeds on the bloom. So in the future, we might just have a lot of these around, because you know we’ve already planted some of the seeds.

Lobster season opened back up on July 1st, and since we were over on the coast with the kids we thought we would take advantage of it. We managed to round up ten pounds of lobster tails to bring back home with us. The ones we got are a little on the small side, which is perfect for a little surf and turf combo.

Speaking of surf and turf combos, our first meal with these lobsters was some beef kabobs with bacon-wrapped lobster and fresh veggies. They turned out just as you would expect, delicious, but way too rich. Lobster season in Belize is open until the end of February, so if you want in on some lobsters, plan your trip here accordingly.

When we lived in Mexico we always had a couple of nice griddles to use on the bbq. Somehow we forgot to pack them when we made the big move. So I drew up plans to make one, a nice piece of 3/16 plate steel with the sides bent up and a couple of handles. So out to Spanish Lookout to Midwest Steel. I was going to get the plate and have them bend up the sides for me. Then I was going to weld up the corners and make some handles for it. I told them what it was going to be and they said that they could weld up the corners and put a couple of handles on it for me. They told me to come back in a half-hour and the cost would be $43 US. It would have taken me longer to get the welder all set up than it did for them to make the whole thing. We’ve had Midwest Steel make a bunch of things for us including some plasma cutting, they are awesome!

Recently we have seen a few green tree snakes around here, or maybe it’s the same one. Anyway, they are our favorite snake because of their beauty, they’re harmless and they will let you get up close for a few photos. They say they will get up to 6′ in length, and I think this one is very close to it.

This past week we have had an Agouti around here every day. It’s not uncommon to see them, but this time it was a mama with two little babies right in the driveway. By the time Kelley got the camera out the mama and one of the babies had gone back into the bush. Kelley did manage to get a picture of one of the babies. Hopefully, we can get a picture of all of them together.

We’ve been wanting to build an outdoor shower for quite a while now. It’s not a big fancy one like the ones I have saved on Pinterest, but a simple one right next to the house. This will be great to rinse off after a hot day of working in the yard. Or just to get wet and sit down on the deck with a cold beer.

Since the shower is a few steps off the deck we thought we needed a few stepping stones between the deck and the shower. Stepping stones are hard to find here so we decided to make our own. We found a big round plastic tub at the store, we already had a bag of cement, chicken wire and we borrowed a few buckets of sand from the neighbor (don’t tell him). You know we couldn’t just make them plain, so we placed a few leaves in the tub and cast on top of them. Then we pealed the leaves off and with a little paint and a sealer, it looked like they should work.

I’m sure a lot of you have seen all the fun and exciting pictures that the kids have been posting about their trip to Belize. At this point, we have no one scheduled to visit us until December. Currently American, United, Alaska and Delta are all flying down from the states and Southwest will resume service in November along with Frontier starting in December. What are you waiting for?