Dry Season

Mid February and we haven’t seen a drop of rain since Christmas. That is a little bit dryer than we had expected. To keep our trees alive, we go to Malena once or twice a week to water them. That is quite a job; the water is, obviously, at the lowest point of the plot, while some trees are way up the hills. (Now when you read this, do remember that we are Dutch and therefore call anything ten meters higher than its surroundings a hill and would only attempt to climb a mountain (100 m or higher) with full mountaineering equipment.)

But as a result of all this watering, almost all our trees are still alive. You can view several of them and other photos in the yahoo album:
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/loesroos/album?.dir=/8f39re2&.src=ph&.tok=phpMcWGBesK0UhNG

The Panama tree has new leaves again, the tabebuias are growing fast, the sauces, harinas, schizolobiums, mahoganies and wild cashews are all still alive. Most of the palm trees have formed new leaves, the heliconias have flowered and are producing new shoots and the gingers are also still alive. Of the cocoa trees that Loes has sown on the farm, eight have germinated and they are all alive and growing. We have had some damage from insects, but even if all leaves are eaten, new ones appear pretty soon.

But there have been a few victims. One ‘caucho’ and most ‘pera rojas’ died. We planted a few breadfruit trees and soursops on top of a windy hill and those are struggling, but still alive. We have already organized more seeds from a soursop by eating one, which is quite a pleasant task, so we will be planting more of those in the rainy season. The bamboo and one ‘campanula amarilla’ (yellow bells) have been dug op by an unknown animal that appears to like digging around in the soil that we have dug up before. We replanted those trees and the campanula and two bamboos survived this. Unfortunately, one of the replanted bamboos was dug up again last week and it did not survive a rereplanting. We can only hope that this animal, possibly a coati or an armadillo, won’t come back too often. Or rather, that it starts digging up grass rather than our precious trees.

Our verandah nursery is also having success. Four of the five seeds of the stinking toe (Hymenaea courbaril, and yes the fruit smells like unwashed feet) have germinated and the seedlings are nearly a foot high now. We also have another ten cocoa seedlings, about five germinated palm seeds from Bocas (no idea which species) and the first seed of five Panama seeds has germinated. The first two of 28 ‘monkey condom’ (Couratari guianensis) seeds germinated after 30 days. We continue to wait patiently because the seeds of this tree need an average of 45 days to germinate. We also have seedlings of coriander and hot pepper waiting to be planted near the future kitchen.

There are still lots of little bags with seeds standing where nothing has happened yet, but we also keep a close watch on these enigmatic entities…. And there are many more seeds waiting to be planted. Some of stinking toe, Panama tree, monkey condom and fourteen other species. That will probably take place in the coming weeks, so that we can plant them at the beginning of the rainy season.

And if we have too many trees (although that sounds very unlikely), there are alternatives. We just read that cocoa and stinking toe are suitable for Bonsai, so maybe we will start torturing young trees as well (but only as a hobby). There is a guy in the Metropolitan Park in Panama who has a large collection of Bonsai trees and we might visit him to get some ideas and guidelines.

Meanwhile we have discovered that planting wild cashew falls in the category ‘carrying water to the sea’, just like planting guava and nance. We have at least a dozen full grown wild cashews on the property as well as dozens of seedlings. We also won’t need to grow ‘roble’ (Tabebuia rosea) because there are plenty of those already present as well. By now we have identified at least 50 species of trees and 10 species of shrubs growing on our property. Most species grow along the little stream on our land or are part of the living fence. One of them, the Erythrinia fusca, is visited by at least three species of hummingbird when it is flowering. These are among the 50 species of birds that make a regular appearance on our property. Among the residents are a breeding pair of great kiskadees (Pitangus sulphuratus) and a family group of groovebilled anis (Crotophaga sulcirostris). The anis normally follow cattle to catch insects. They now occasionally follow us when we water the trees but they seem to regard us as a rather poor substitute.