We recently posted pictures of our elephant ear plants and how big the leaves are getting. Little did we know that they were going to bloom with a few lily type flowers. So besides the plant having these very big beautiful leaves they also get flowers. The plants down here are constantly amazing us.
Another plant that grows wild around the property is passion fruit. In my opinion, the fruit is so-so to eat, but the star of the plant is the beautiful flowers that it produces. There are a lot of flowering plants down here, but the passion fruit flower is by far my favorite. If you are ever down here visiting and there are some blooming we will definitely point them out so you can get some pictures.
Kelley saves or throws out in the yard every seed from everything, and usually, they grow. Recently she planted some papaya seeds and you guessed it, they grew. She just planted about 20 papaya trees that should produce within a year or so since their lifespan is only a few years. It might sound like a lot of plants, but once they get bigger and we determine the males from the females then we’ll thin them out. We are not big fans of fresh papaya, but dehydrated they are pretty good, plus they will be great on the bird feeders.
We’re gonna need some more monkeys! We just harvested another bunch of the small sweet apple bananas. We knew they would be ready soon and I estimated about 120 or so on this bunch. Well, I was way off…there were 183 bananas on this stalk, our biggest one so far. The last big bunch we ate as many as we could and then Kelley sliced the rest, soaked them in mango juice, and then dehydrated them. Currently, we have dehydrated mangos, pineapple, and the mango soaked bananas in the fridge and the bananas are my favorite. Looks like more banana-everything.
Outside Kelley’s office window we set up a bird feeder so she can watch all the different types of birds and get some good pictures. Well, the other day there was a big surprise when a Collared Forest Falcon landed there just 20′ outside her window. It was the biggest bird that has been on the feeder so far and being a falcon we know he wasn’t there for the fruits.
As you know we love all types of food and especially Mexican food. The problem is that a lot of the ingredients for Mexican food like we are used to are not available down here. For instance, we had to grow our own Hatch (Anaheim) green chilies, make chorizo from scratch, and hominy is impossible to find. We’ve really been craving a big pot of posole, but the main ingredient is hominy. So along with the last Amazon order, we ordered a couple of bags of dried hominy so we could finally get our posole fix. Wouldn’t you know that the very next time we were at the grocery store they had cans of hominy, and we look for it every single time we go to the store. Oh well, we finally got our fix of posole and it was soooooo good.
Recently we were sitting out back and the sun was beating down on us and we thought that it would be great if we had an umbrella on one of the tables. We found a few at the local stores, but they were very expensive. So we thought why not ask the beer distributor if they had any, after all, they are quite common at restaurants. The distributor didn’t have any and didn’t even know where we could get one. So I asked at one of the restaurants and he said he has a guy and could get me one. About a month later he called and there it was, a brand new, in the box, Belikin table umbrella, and the price was excellent! So now when you are hanging out here having a couple cold Belikins while we’re grilling something up, we’ve got you covered.
It seems that everywhere you go down here they are taking your temp before you are allowed to go inside. At our place, we are adopting that same policy and making sure our beer is the right temp before it enters our system. So far we have had no problems with the beer and everything is good. If everyone adopted this policy then the world would be a better place, well, except for those countries where they like their beer the same temp as they are.
Just before we moved here we were sitting at a restaurant in Mexico having some pizza and beer, when a guy walked up selling old road maps. At first, I said no thank you, then I decided to take a look anyway. Turns out he had a map of the Caribbean, and since we were moving there I bought it for $5. Once we got it home I discovered that it was a Nat Geo map from 1947. It was very cool as Belize wasn’t a country yet, it was still British Honduras. Puerto Peñasco, MX where we lived was on the map, but San Carlos, MX was not. Anyway, we finally got it mounted to a board and hung up in the garage. It’s great to look at this 73-year-old map and see everything that has changed over the years.
Speaking of change, the Toucan Hideaway has changed a lot this year. From the new deck, pizza oven, smoker, and tables out back, to getting reliable internet. The fruit trees are starting to mature, all the landscaping plants around the house are filling in and the grass is starting to fill in over the rocks in the driveway. Whether you’ve been here before or it will be your first time, you’ll love what we’ve done.
Hope to see you soon.