Pineapple

     We have lots of pineapple plants...about four hundred so far.   And as a plant produces fruit it also produces more plants so we'll be adding to what we've already got.  

The fruit, the actual pineapple, starts in the heart of the plant

and grows slowly over several weeks

but it's worth the wait.

There is a new, young plant visible just to the right of the fruit.

Facebook

     False Bluff now has a Facebook page at www.facebook.com/pages/False-Bluff/142899219245180 and you can 'like' this blog on your own Facebook page. 
     We've created a Facebook page to cover things that might not be happening at False Bluff but that are relevant to False Bluff and the part of Nicaragua where it lives...resources or other information that might be of interest to people curious about this part of the world.  
     For instance, if you land in Bluefields and want to visit False Bluff, how do you get here?  Can we recommend a good and reliable boat captain?  Yes, we can and we will...on our Facebook page.
     And for those of you who might have visited Bluefields and been concerned about the plight of street dogs, in the (near, I hope) future we hope to be able to post on Facebook the creation of a group to take positive action on behalf of these animals.
     So check out the page from time to time and see what's going on or who's being featured.
   

Covenants and Restrictions and Electricity

     In preparation for offering some house lots for sale at False Bluff,  I'd spent some time writing covenants and restrictions...including a portion dealing with electricity for the houses that would call for the installation of solar power as primary power source, with generators to be used only during construction or as emergency back up. 
     And then one day during a walk on the beach I met a man who asked permission to bring his boat up our creek.
     Our language difference made clear communication awkward, so when we got back to the house I phoned a friend in Bluefields who helped the two of us get at just what he was asking for.   A crew chief from Enel, Nicaragua's electric company, he wanted to be able to bring his crew up our creek because the creek presented such an easy way to get the crew to their current work area.   
     Under his authority twenty guys showed up the next day to continue chopping the right-of-way they had begun far to the north of us (they're not all shown below).   These guys were followed a week later by the chain-saw crew, cutting trees that were too big for machetes.  

     The machete crew does the first job in Enel's project to run power from Kukra Hill north of False Bluff south along the coast to El Bluff and then across the bay to Bluefields.  Actually the power lines will run all the way across Nicaragua from Managua to Kukra and then down our section of the Caribbean coast.  The poles are being delivered by way of the sea and have already been installed from Kukra about half-way down to False Bluff.
     My reaction to this life-altering event is the same as that of everyone else who's heard it:  simple disbelief.   Electricity along any of the RAAS coast was not on anybody's radar, but it's happening.
     

     

Smokey Lane Lagoon - RAAS, Nicaragua

     I've posted lots of pictures showing the Caribbean....beautiful and hard to miss when you're at False Bluff.   
     But somehow Smokey Lane Lagoon seems to have been lost in the shuffle.  We're always in a boat when we get to the lagoon and maybe it's just worry about what a bad combination water and cameras can be that keeps the camera packed away.  
     The creek that we opened early in this project connects the lagoon to the docks at False Bluff.  Being on a boat in the creek is like floating through a tunnel that wanders through a mangrove jungle all the way.  
     Here we're about to break into the bright sunlight on the lagoon leaving False Bluff for a run to Bluefields, eight miles away.

     And just outside the mouth of the creek there's a good view across Smokey Lane to Kukra Hill.

A night on Nicaragua's Caribbean coast

     When there's literally nothing else around for miles, full moon nights are beautiful.

Looking east...

 and looking west.

Coconut tree's incredible root system

     I've planted hundreds of coconut trees primarily for their looks and their impact on the environment.  My employees and most of the visitors from Bluefields agree the trees are nice to look at but they're mostly interested in the food-producing capabilities of the trees and have advised me that I've planted so many the trees won't produce very well.
     An excellent reason for planting coconut trees is their extensive root system and what that root system does to stabilize the environment.   The trees are lost sometimes:  a poor start that didn't allow the root system to get a good grasp at the tree's beginning;  years of people hacking at them with machetes; encroaching seas that wipe out what the roots hold onto.  
     Here's one that got a bad start and then was chopped at for years.  Planted just to the right of the trunk are two small plugs of a grass that may help this (see May 16, 2013 post about the grass).

     But none of them give up easily.   

Photo by Andre Shank

Sea turtles and 'agua mala'

     Simply meaning 'bad water,'  the phrase 'agua mala' is used locally to describe most any kind of stinging thing that floats along this part of the Caribbean, including jellyfish.     
     For the first time recently I saw several of another kind of agua mala:  Portuguese man o'war.
     There were no live ones visible while I was in the water, I'm glad to say; but several had washed up along the beach to die.  Their stings, leaving red welts that can last for days, rarely cause human death; but the venom causes intense pain.          
     This particular agua mala, the Portuguese man o'war,  is a common part of the diet for loggerhead turtles.  It's said that when you see lots of these around - in or out of the water - the turtle population is down; and we know that turtle populations are down world-wide.  
     The fact that they eat these things is one more reason among many I can think of to not kill sea turtles.  

    

How to open a really big seed

     Coconuts are just really big seeds.  People with experience can separate a coconut from its heavy outerwear with three machete strikes and a few pulls - and make doing it look easy.  But that kind of expertise takes a lot of practice.
       Finding coconuts for practice isn't the problem it used to be.  Before there was a constant presence at False Bluff our coconuts disappeared as fast as somebody could knock them off the trees. Now we pick up nearly a dozen a day. 

            
     But getting at the useful parts of the coconuts can be a whole other story.   Mr. Allen (see a couple of previous posts) has opened a lot of coconuts and he coached.  

Seeds

     A common vine that creeps along the sand close to shore creates these seeds, some of which I put in a bronze cup.  Each seed is slightly different....size, thickness, color...

The gardening challenge, part 2

     My first post about the problems of growing things like cucumbers and tomatoes at False Bluff was in the December 11, 2012 post;  and it took us less than a year to learn that the approach I wrote about then does not work.  The heat, the intense sun, the salt spray, the sometimes-heavy winds, and the sometimes-heavy rains aged the protective structure into uselessness.   Sure, I could have a longer-lasting wood cut for poles and set them in concrete, or paint everything, or buy and install real thatching for the roof of the shade house.
     Or I could have a living, productive defense against the worst of the weather:  banana trees.   
     Banana trees aren't entirely immune to the problems of things that grow near the sea, but so far the worst damage I see to the banana trees we have already have growing close to the sea is some scalding that puts brown patches on the leaves.  I haven't noticed any decrease in fruit production.  
     So, the first line of defense will actually be two lines of defense:  one straight line of banana trees; and about fifteen feet away from these (and to the south) a second straight line of banana trees.  Each tree in the second line will be planted in the spaces between the trees in the first line.   Together, the two staggered lines will present sort of a wall between the Caribbean and vegetable plants.
     Bananas grow and clump up pretty quickly, but it'll be at least a year before we'll start a vegetable garden.   In the meantime we'll probably add a few more rows of banana trees so that we can plant vegetables between rows.  That way when the trees are grown they'll provide some shade from the worst of the overhead sun.
     Here's the process....

From a clump of banana trees choose a tree.

and separate that tree from the clump,

 Prop up any tree that decides to come along.

Plant the tree...

and admire your work.

Voila!  The first row of defense in place.

Coconut trees...new and old

     We've planted hundreds of coconut trees.   After the clearing began came additional coconut trees to join the ones 'uncovered' by the clearing.   Initially we had to buy these small trees to plant because at that point in time the coconuts on the trees at False Bluff disappeared before we could harvest them for food or for sprouting.
  

     We used the tallest trees we could purchase to line the avenida, or main roadway...the one that bisects the section that we cleared first.  The rest of the trees we planted in the way we hoped nature might have planted them.   We've lost some of these young trees to one thing or another and have replaced them as needed.   But even with planting replacements, we seem to keep on finding new places to put more coconut trees, like those near the palapa where the sea turtles come to lay and hatch.   And, of course, the trees have grown.

From upstairs, 2011

    From upstairs, 2013
     (definitely not the rainy season)

picture by Andre Shank

Horses and hair sticks

     Three generations of the Julio Lopez family in Bluefields carve items mostly from rosewood and mahogany that they rescue.   In Virginia, when the utility company clears power lines, the trees that get taken down are usually oak, or pine.   Near Bluefields it might be mahogany, like the piece they took home to cure not too long ago.   
     Their creations include items that the Lopez family already knows will sell quickly as well as items that are custom made.  And their work has traveled far:  a group of Peace Corps volunteers recently collected pre-ordered plaques and there's a piece of the family's work on display in the Nicaragua's Embassy in Washington, D.C.  
     I have what was to the senior Lopez a piece of trash:  a mahogany rocking horse (minus the rockers obviously). The first horse of a custom order didn't meet his pretty exacting standards and so was discarded - literally dropped on the ground where it propped up one end of a low seat for years.   The horse now hangs on a wall at my house in Virginia.  

     

A recent visitor to False Bluff custom-ordered hair sticks made of rosewood....

    

 and then gave a pair to a member of our False Bluff family.

     My friend Sylvia Fox - who is more like a sister I never knew I had until I got to Nicaragua - liked the idea of the hair sticks enough to make her own from a pair of bamboo skewers she found in the False Bluff kitchen.  

...and beach treasures

     Not everything that washes ashore is trash.   I have bowls of pumice (see July 23, 2011 post) scattered throughout the house.   

...some even with remains of sea creatures still attached.

Beach trash

     For decades very few people visited False Bluff because the only way to get there was either to hire a boat and travel a costly distance up the Caribbean coast...or to slog a half-mile through a swamp, very uncomfortable in the dry season and hell during the wet.   
     So there's not been much effort to clean up the trash that washes ashore.   It's easy to see it's been coming in for a long time because some old stuff has been buried deep, uncovered as the sand comes and goes.

     I've tried to figure out where the trash comes from.   The closest land to the east where humans live and produce trash are the two Corn Islands, Big and Little.   They're only forty miles off shore but a lot of what has washed ashore at False Bluff isn't the sort of stuff that would have come from either place.   I think most of it's the residue of decades of cruise ships jettisoning their trash into the Caribbean.  
     As recently as 2009 many of the islands and countries in and along the Caribbean sea had not adopted the United Nations dumping ban that requires cruise ships to treat ship-generated garbage on land.   The Marine Pollution Control Act bans cruise ships from dumping plastics anywhere but they are permitted to dump garbage into the sea if it's been ground into smaller pieces (whatever 'smaller pieces' are).  

     I've begun to wonder over the last few years if maybe publicity about their dumping has caused some cruise ship lines to re-think their policies and take some ameliorating action.  (They make much of their money off the Caribbean, so to me it's logical that they'd invest in taking care of it.)  I think this because much of what we clean up are 'vintage' products, often quite easy to determine by labels; and because less and less 'new' stuff washes shore.   
     Maybe that last is wishful thinking on my part, that part about less stuff washing ashore because of a cruise ship line's efforts.   And that in reality we've cleaned up trash that took decades to collect and so we're seeing less now simply because we're making constant efforts to clean up, not waiting decades between clean-ups.
   

picture by Andre Shank

     Maybe the trash is still coming in on each tide the way it always has, and the difference is that now someone's taking the time to pick it up before it collects.  Who knows...but we'll just keep cleaning the beach.



   

Landscaping with swamp lilies

      The palapa near the end of the main roadway sits right at the edge of the beach.   Before the house was enlarged to include a kitchen, the palapa was the kitchen, with plastic sides and a primitive stove (see April 24, 2012 post). 

     Sea turtles nest in the sand just to the right of the palapa so after we removed the larger of the two buildings that were there, we thoroughly cleaned the area.   We also planted some coconut trees and swamp lilies nearby but we did nothing that will get in the way of the turtles.  Neither the small trees nor the swamp lilies give much of a show right now, but in only a couple of years the lilies at least will look as though they've been there a long time.

Swamp lilies

     I have no idea what this plant's called but it grows well almost everywhere...in sand close to the water and in low swampy land along the edge of the creek.  It's got a huge bulb that looks like an onion, with fleshy roots; and though it grows into a large clump it doesn't spread fast or far enough to be invasive.  

     And its exotic bloom's so white it seems to glow.

And among the guests an artist

     Andre Shank, one of the guests from Virginia, is an artist.  He's  a prolific painter so he's adding new work to his blog pretty regularly.  I've got two of Andre's paintings, one a gift from him and two of the other guests; and one I bought later.   
     Two of the paintings on his blog are portraits of people he met while at False Bluff.  Mr. Allen (also see May 8, 2012 post) and Mr. Allen's neighbor Ariel, both of whom live on the beach north of my place.   You can see Andre's work, including the portraits of Mr. Allen and Ariel on horseback, at his blog.   Check it out to find the portraits of these two people:

http://thebombproof.blogspot.com/

     Mr. Allen and Andre at the Caribbean Dream Hotel on Bluefield's main street.

     

     Ariel heading past False Bluff on his way to El Bluff and then to work in Bluefields.

Guests

     Five guests from Virginia visited False Bluff recently.

  

Passion fruit

     Another flower...pretty like the water hyacinth; but this one is more than just pretty.   The passion fruit, known in Nicaragua as calala, produces a delicious fruit as well as a pretty flower.  Different varieties of passion fruit grow in a lot more places than Nicaragua, including Virginia in corn and tobacco fields.   
     According to some sources the name 'passion fruit' is attributable to early missionaries somewhere who compared parts of the flower to the 'passion' or torture of Jesus:  the three stigmas of the flower reflected the three nails that nailed him to a cross; the twisty tendrils of the vine were like the whips that were used on him; and the ten petals of the flower 'resembled' the apostles (although I heard somewhere there were twelve apostles).  All whimsy, but a lovely flower nonetheless.
        

   
     And from each flower comes a fruit.  In markets in Bluefields the variety of calala for sale is smaller than what we have growing wild at False Bluff; and the fruit in the markets there have yellow, wrinkled skin.  
       Below are shown two vines that grow right outside the kitchen.  We made some serious inroads into this batch on a recent visit. 

  

     

     We pick our pale green variety, slice off the top 1/4 or so, and scoop out and eat the insides with a spoon, seeds and all.  The fruit also makes a delicious drink.