We finally got all of our rocks spread from our never-ending pile. We seriously didn’t think we would have enough to do all the trails, plus extra for spots in the driveway, the walkway in front of the casita, misc low spots, and all around the house. I guess 14 yards of rocks goes a lot farther than we thought.

A few months ago Ruben asked if he and his brother could do some air-layering on some of our cacao trees. Air layering is when you cut back the bark on a healthy branch and then wrap the cut with soil and a plastic bag until roots form. Once the roots form, the branch can then be cut off the tree and you have an exact clone of the mother tree. Out of the ten branches they did, nine of them had nice root balls and were ready to be cut off and planted. By doing this he said that the new trees should be producing cacao by next year, as opposed to a tree planted from seed that takes a few years.

We have recently had a bunch of leaf-cutter ants around here. They can completely strip a tree of every leaf in one evening. So far, they have stripped two of our jasmine trees before we noticed them. Luckily, after a few weeks the leaves are starting to come back. I put some stuff out that was supposed to get rid of the ants, and they seemed to go away. Then the other day I noticed that they were back, and they had already stripped two of our smaller cacao trees that we put in a couple years ago. There’s a whole jungle of plants out there, somehow we just have to keep them away from ours.

Earlier this year we had to cut down most of our banana plants because of a disease they got. We left a few plants, because they looked like they were doing okay. One of them finally got a good-sized bunch of bananas, about 80 plus. It looked like they had a couple more weeks to go before they were ready to pick, but then the plant just gave up and bent in half. We had to pick them a little green, so we’ll have to see if they ripen up or just become animal food. The good thing is that the new plants we put in a different area are getting big and looking healthy. Hopefully soon we’ll start getting bananas again.

We recently planted our miracle berry plant in the ground along with our other medicinal plants. It really seems to like being in the ground, as it’s getting bigger, healthier, and has a lot more fruit. The reason it’s with our other medicinal plants is that Miracle Fruit is used as a natural remedy for diabetes management and as a support for cancer patients experiencing taste disruptions. Besides that, it’s fun to just eat one and have everything sour you taste be sweet. Sometimes when I want something a little different, I’ll eat one and have a few beers and they’ll taste like some of those fancy fruity beers.

Time to make some more chocolates. This time we decided to try making some filled ones. Recently Kelley made some pineapple jam and some jungle jam (bananas, coconut and pineapple). We ended up freezing little balls of the jams and then putting them in the molds and covering them with chocolate. They were really good and the best part was that most of the ingredients came from right here. I guess all we need to do now is start growing some sugar cane to complete it all.

After four weeks, one of our small test pepperonis had lost the amount of weight it needed, so it was time to taste it. The flavor was there, but we both thought that it needed to be a little drier. So now we will recalculate the weight loss on the others and keep sampling until we get them where we think they should be. This batch of pepperoni we put extra spice in to make it hotter, but it still wasn’t spicy enough for us. For our first attempt, we thought it turned out good, and we can’t wait to try the other types of salamis once they get good and dry.

This past weekend our neighbors Chuck & Roxane came down from the States for a week to check on their house. Darren also showed up and will be here for a couple weeks. Since we had a few neighbors around, we thought it was a good time to break out the ham I smoked a few weeks ago. Of course, Amanda was also here, so it was like a mini block party. We also invited our other neighbor, John who is only here a few more days before he moves back to Canada. His wife Penny has already made the move. We also invited another couple (Andrew & Amanda), who just moved here from Washington.

Anyway, the ham turned out great. We put it in a pan on the grill to warm it up with some apple juice and then covered it tightly to steam until it got up to serving temp. Kelley made her Jaguar beans, Amanda made a potato salad, Chuck & Roxi brought a chipotle mac and cheese, Andrew and Amanda brought some  Vietnamese spring roils and John brought stuff for margaritas. Darren was just arriving that day, so there was no need for him to bring anything but his appetite.

While we were gathered out on the patio, a very small armadillo wondered through the yard.  He was only about 6″ long not including his tail. He didn’t seem to care that we were there talking with the music on, he just went about his business before heading off into the bush.

This is our 300th blog post since we first started this over 10 years ago with a dream and a big sense of adventure. We’ve covered a lot, starting when we first got the property, cutting a road in, running 16 power poles and 2,500′ of water line down to the property. I’m still not sure what we were thinking. In that time, we’ve learned a lot about tropical gardening, seen some incredible wildlife, learned a lot about local culture, met some incredible people, and had some of the best adventures of our lives. Looking back, it’s hard to believe everything we’ve accomplished once we set our minds to it.

We’ve been working really hard around here for the past couple months. So we’re hoping to head back over to Placencia while Darren’s here and get out and do a little fishing.