The rainy season has finally started. So far it mostly just rains overnight and the days are sometimes sunny, but usually cloudy. That’s great for all the plants as everything has lots of new growth and it’s very green around here. It’s also a great time to get some new plants in the ground so that their roots can take advantage of the wet soil and get well established.

The past few weekends we have been working hard on our new garden paths. We’ve been cutting and clearing all the old jungle growth, cleaning up what’s left on the ground, cutting down more trees to use as borders, and it’s finally starting to come together. So far, we’ve planted around 160 plants that we’ve had in pots from cuttings and a few we bought at the nursery.

There is still a lot of work to do, but we are getting it done twenty feet at a time. Hopefully, by early next year, we will have it done and all the plants will start to fill in, and all the different colors of flowers will be blooming. Now we just have to find a couple six six-foot garden gnomes and we’ll be set.🤣

Last year we bought some shampoo ginger plants that grew well for a few months and then died off. We didn’t know at the time that they go dormant during the winter, but now they’re back and doing well. They are starting to get red flower heads on them that resemble a pine cone. By squeezing the flower head you can release a clear fragrant juice that is used as a shampoo and conditioner that softens and brings shine to your hair. It can be left in your hair or washed out, and can also be used as a massage lubricant. We’re always amazed at some of the unique plants that we have here.

We just ate our last pineapple of the season. This year we ended up with 80-90 pineapples, but about 20% were eaten by critters. Now it’s time to replace the plants that did produce and get some new ones in their place. There are still a lot of plants in the ground that didn’t produce a pineapple, but they should next year. Plus, we have another 80 or so tops and slips that are rooted and ready to go into the ground. By next May or so we should start having pineapples ready again.

It’s been a while since we’ve picked any of our own bananas. Last year took a big toll on the plants when they were flooded out for weeks at a time. They seem to have made a comeback, but are still not doing as good as they once were. Since then, we have planted a few more in an area that should never have any standing water around them. The old plants are still producing a few bunches of small bananas. Even though they are lacking in size, that sure doesn’t affect how tasty they are. Plus, they make some delicious banana bread.

A while back we bought some habaneros at our local produce stand that were exceptionally big. We decided to save and plant some of the seeds from those peppers to see how they’d do. Well, they grew into the biggest, healthiest plants we’ve had yet. Anyway, the plants are loaded with peppers now, and they are just as big as the ones they came from. They are big, beautiful peppers, but they are very, very spicy.

Yellow lemons are usually hard to find down here, and when you do, they are quite pricy. Around six years ago, we planted a yellow Meyer Lemon tree. It has grown into a decent-sized tree, but has not produced any lemons until this year. There are only about a dozen lemons on the tree, but that’s still very exciting for us. Hopefully, now that it has started to produce, next season we will have an abundance of lemons.

Since we’ve had on-and-off rains lately, there have been all kinds of mushrooms popping up everywhere. Last week, we gathered up a bunch of wood-ear mushrooms, which are commonly used in hot and sour soup. Then we decided to get our boots on and go in search of the highly prized oyster mushrooms. After a short walk around the property, we had gathered up a good-sized bag of these delicious fungi. That evening, we threw a steak on the grill and Kelley sautéed up these mushrooms with a little butter and onions. They are so delicious and I wish we could find them all the time, but if that were the case, they probably wouldn’t seem so special.

One crop of tomatoes at our farm lot is done and is about ready to be taken out. There are still a lot of very good tomatoes left on the plants. Ruben says that they are too small to go to market and currently the price is way down. So before most of them fall off or get plowed under, we went up and picked a good 50lbs. to bring home. There are still about 5,000 other plants in the ground at various stages, from seedlings to some that are just about ready to start picking. So we don’t need to can or freeze any of these, as we will have fresh tomatoes till the end of the year. Besides some fresh pasta sauce, we thought, why not juice some? Kelley got the juicer out and made a bunch of tomato juice, she also added celery, carrots, parsley, habanero, and some spices to it. At this point it’s looking like there could be Bloody Mary’s in our future.

We’ve been making more candies with our homegrown chocolate. This time we thought we’d try making some Andes Mints, you know the kind with dark chocolate layered around a green minty layer. We kept adding a lot of mint to the green layer, but in the end we think it still could have used a little more. We also made some of them in round molds with the mint chocolate on top of the dark chocolate. Since we were melting chocolate, we also poured some over craisins in small round molds, and those also turned out really good.

Saw this furry creature down in a hole out back the other day. Okay, it’s not a porcupine or a Wookiee or some other type of hairy critter; it’s what’s left from a palm tree stump. Every time I saw it, I’d take an extra glance thinking it was an animal of some type. So I thought it needed some googly eyes and a nose. Now I don’t even take a second look when I walk by.

Out back, attached to the house, is a small covered shed with no door where our butane tank is kept. Recently a couple of bats have taken up residency inside the shed. I’m fine with that because I know they eat their weight in bugs every night. The only problem I have is that every time I get too close to the shed, they come out and circle around me before taking off. I think the bats are cool and everything, but when they startle you, that’s another story.

Only a handful of times have we seen the Russet-naped wood-rail up around our place. It was long thought that they were primarily a coastal species found around the mangroves. However, there have been a growing number of inland sightings suggesting an elevational migration, with the mangroves being their winter habitat. The past week, there has been a family of 5-6 wandering around our yard. They are a cool bird to watch with their long pink legs and a chicken-like walk.

We usually look forward to Fridays as it’s the beginning of the weekend. We’ll go to town, get some lunch and maybe a couple beers. Then that evening, we might have a couple of friends over for happy hour and throw something on the grill. This Friday morning, I got up at 5:30 and got in the shower only to find out that there was no water. Usually, when there’s a problem in the village, we will still have some water coming out of our pipes, but this time they were dry. So I assumed it might be a broken pipe on our property, and I was right. The main 2″ water pipe just inside our gate had broken a fitting. Kelley and I dug it down, and I rummaged through my spare parts and came up with what we needed to fix it. The only thing I didn’t have was some wet PVC cement. Once the little hardware store in the village opened, I went to see if they had any, and luckily they did. We are lucky that it broke while we were here, because a 2″ water pipe would put a lot of water in our yard very fast. After all that, we did end up going to town for lunch and we did have a happy hour.

From the beginning, we have struggled with decent internet service. Some providers have towers in our village, but we have mountains around us that prevent us from receiving a signal. An independent provider managed to set up a couple of small repeater towers and provide a decent signal to us. Recently, the guy who was providing our internet passed away, and the company dissolved. They only gave us a few weeks’ notice before our internet was to be gone for good. Our only option was to see about Starlink, but it’s not available in Belize yet. After checking into it, Belize will give permission if there is no other way for you to get service. So we ordered a Starlink system on Amazon and managed to get a three-year approval from the Public Utility Commission here in Belize. Our old internet would go out quite often and usually have download speeds around 5 to 30mbps. Now with Starlink we are averaging download speeds well over 100 and we have seen speeds up to 290. It looks like we have finally got this internet problem figured out.

Now when you come down to visit us, you can stay connected to the rest of the world, if you want to.