Tag Archives: pitanga

Out and About: More Island Scenes

I hope you enjoy some of these recent island scenes from our yard and out and about.

Pomorrosa mulberry surinam cherry
Some of the delicious produce we grow here at our place: pomarrosa (large pink pear-shaped fruit), mulberry (black berry) and Surinam cherry (little pumpkin looking fruit)

Horse and seaThis sort of captures a feeling of Rincón doesn’t it? Horse and sea

Bazooka jack BK
Britton with a house jack through the tropical gardens to the cabin

DAR Wok eventAt the WOK for a fun fundraiser for DAR, the animal rescue group

Bright green tree frog
Check out this awesome frog we saw against a restaurant window after a heavy rain!

Parrot in the tree close
A wild parrot up in a tree

Turkey mama and babies
Turkey mama and even more pavitos came out of the forest. We’re going to have to downsize on the number of turkeys as we are getting overrun!

Island scene fruit vendor
Roadside fruit vendor under a mango tree (and/or broken down truck 😉 )

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Beginning the Deck

This last week we began the process of building a deck. This first entailed taking down the scaffolding from inside the house and using the materials to build more batter boards.

Inside of house without scaffolding
Inside the house without scaffolding

Batter boards for deck
Building the deck batterboards

Next was to mark and dig the footers and then to pour them.

Down below waldemar and jorgeHello down below! Getting ready to dig the footers for the posts

And then they worked to fill the footers and then the mini-columns that will hold the deck posts.

Deck footers
Footers/mini columns

Next up will be to put up the actual posts, headers and ledgers and then the supports.

In the meantime, the gardens are growing really good. Check out these pitangas we have been gathering!

Pitanga
Pitanga aka Surinam cherry

And these interesting ornamental ginger flowers on curving spiral stalks.

Ginger flower
Unique ginger flower

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Start of Summer in our PR Yard

It’s that time of year again. Early May when the whole town of Rincón seems to clear out. The seasonal folks go back to the (mostly) Northeast of the US, and even people who live here permanently start planning summer vacations. That leaves us die-hards with the whole place to ourselves!  Even the most popular beaches are completely empty! The weather can start to get a little hotter, but at our place under the cool shade of the mango tree, we still have to put on a light blanket at night.

Baby mangoes
Mango flowers and fruitlets

The other transition is in all the plants. Everything comes alive in the summer. The avocados are beginning to form again and mangoes have been dropping like crazy hitting our cabana roof.

The robles (tabebuia) have bloomed a couple of times. They have these dainty trumpeted purple flowers that the hummingbirds and bees love and when they are finished they slowly spiral to the ground and form a flower petal carpet.

Purple roble flowers
Pink/purple robles

We also have lots of different food growing. We recently saw that our Surinam Cherries were fruiting. These are interesting little fruits that are in the shape of a pumpkin. Sweet but also tart with a distinct, hard-to-describe flavor. Britton and I munched on a bunch of them though.

Surnam cherries
Surinam cherry AKA pitanga

And we were super excited to see one of our pineapple plants forming a pineapple! We have had some difficulties in growing citrus as well as pineapple. The citrus has all sorts of diseases here in Puerto Rico, and it seems that pineapple often succumbs to root rot. This one, however, is doing great!

Pineapple forming
Pineapple growing

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