BANANAS!

brock is back at the farm after a month in the states, and jorge has gone off to europe. the farm is officially sold from under us, so b and i are taking a boat the bastimentos in a bit to see about working for a fellow named bruce. he is a huge permaculture geek and in his own monotonical words, ¨my shit kicks ass.¨
we are enjoying the house and the private beach while we still have it. beans and rice and hammocks and cocos.
yesterday, brock took ana and i around the property completely. in the far back is a banana jungle! banana trees are beautiful, their leaves spaning easily 2x5 feet. they produce one long spinal'like cord with a dark purple bud at the bottom that never actually blooms. but its petals seperate up the cord, thicken, turn green and sprout several small white blossoms at the tip. each blossom is the tip of a banana. does that make sense_ they grow tightly together in little light green cubes and as they mature, they seperate and plumpen.. and when the bud at the bottom dies, they are ready to be picked. each tree produces just one batch of bananas in its life. it does sprout another tree right next to it. i pushed one over when we were harvesting yesterday because we couldnt reach the bunch with the machete. they are easy to push over and lots of fun. so bananas arent a fruit because the criteria for fruit is their reproductive seed needs to be in the fruit itself. they are not a tree because the trunk is just layered petal'like strips. bananas are an herb! have you had enough_
bats like bananas. bats like eating our bananas. the chiquita people have huuuge banana plantations here with pools of multicolored chemicals. they spray the banana bunch and quickly wrap it in a big plastic bag and ship it to other countries. you rarely see a banana yellow on the tree. the key is to pick the whole bunch, hang it somewhere and eat as each one ripens. you can also cut them up when they are still green and fry them! que sabor! brock has yet to make special banana dessert with the dwarf bananas we just got. we shall see.
i am glad he is here. i was sort of distracted when i first got here, confused about the farm situation, and spent a lot of my money. the two reasons i am down here are to learn spanish and learn permaculture. other things are naturally happening and are amazing, but i sort of refocused and got my head back on straight. hopefully this new farm will work out and even bring me a bit of money. if not, i am ready to look for other farms, which are plenty in peru and costa rica. vamos aver!!
i am having reoccuring dreams about philadelphia and my family there. my heart hurts sometimes. but there´s too much bob marley playing here all the time to get too depressed.
love.