The start of the Rainy Season

Alter a false start in mid April, the rainy season finally began last week. Straight away 62 mm in one day and 14 mm the on the next. A few more showers and we can start planting trees again. Kees has already planted a few Ixora-bushes and Heliconia flowers, but that is mostly to beautify the area around the rancho’s and to feed the hummingbirds.

Before we start to reforest new areas, we will have to replace the approximately 45 trees that did not survive the dry season. We lost about 5% of the 900 trees we planted during last year. Some will be replaced by other species because they did not grow very well at the place we put them. A small part of our land turns into a swamp for six months and some of the trees we planted there, can not cope with those circumstances.

We will get some new species as well. We left a wish list with a reputable nursery and when we checked last month, they had at least half of what we wanted. But most trees were still small. Furthermore, Loes has been busy in our own nursery and we have seedlings with exotic names as ice cream bean, jobo and tronador. We also found some new and interesting species for sale in the Summit Gardens in Panama City, which we immediately took with us. So now we have monkey condom, monkey comb and monkey pot trees. I am thinking of planting them right next to each other along a path, with a sign giving their common names.

Of the 900 trees we planted last year, 700 were sponsored by people who wanted to compensate for their carbon dioxide production. And, as you could read in an earlier blog, they also helped restore the biodiversity in the area (and since that blog we have registered two more species of bird and a caiman on our property!). If you would like to do this too, you can. For € 100 (U$ 160) we plant 20 trees on about 500 m². The carbon dioxide sequestered by these trees compensates about 5% of the carbon dioxide an average European produces during his/her life (2.5% for the average American). We will send you a certificate with a list of the trees you helped planting. We are trying to restore a forest, so we plant as many species naturally occurring in Panama as we can (tropical forests are very diverse) and we choose trees that are attractive to birds and mammals. We also plant shrubs and orchids to further increase the biodiversity. If you would like to support this initiative, or need more information, please send an email to tanagertourism@gmail.com.