Beach finds

     You never know what you're going to find on the beach.

     And sometimes even after you find something, it takes a closer look to figure out just what it is you've found.... This turned out to be a sort of shovel or scraper.

False Bluff....

 

Food - but what is it?

     We've planted a lot of food-producing plants at False Bluff.  To name some, we've put in coconut, papaya, mango, sugar cane, quince, soursop, banana, peppers, passion fruit, oranges, lemons...you get the idea. 
     And now we've planted seedlings of this small tree but I at least have no idea what it's called.  I first saw the fruit hanging from a tree in the yard of a Bluefields' friend.  Of course at the time I didn't know that what I was looking at was fruit, or more specifically, a huge seed pod.  The tree shown here's about four years old.

No, those aren't snakes hanging from the tree.

     They are long pods with a very tough corrugated skin.

     When the pods are opened, they're filled with puffy things. 

     The seeds themselves aren't edible.....

but the sweet, puffy covering is...kind of like cotton candy. Very sweet!

     This is a really bad picture, but the seeds above were at False Bluff less than a week and they had already sprouted and ready to pot, in anticipation of going into the ground and adding to our collection...

House lots and termites

      In 2014 we had seven house lots surveyed.  We then marked each corner of each lot with a wooden stake.  Each stake was completely painted with oil paint - twice - before the appropriate lot number was painted on the stakes, one numbered stake for each lot's corner. For being done under fairly primitive conditions the stakes looked nice and the sky blue color showed up really well.

     In 2015 we replaced all those stakes because the termites ate right through both layers of oil paint and much of the wood.  We replaced those nice wooden stakes with nice PVC stakes - again, one stake for each of the four corners of each of the seven lots - with numbers.

     Let's see what the termites do with these babies!

Internationales

     A few years ago I was walking in Bluefields with a friend and pointed out a couple on the other side of the street.
    'Gringos'  I said.
    She corrected me with a smile.  'No.  Now we call them internationales.'
    On Big and Little Corn Islands prices are high and available land is disappearing, especially land on the water.  So, more and more internationales are looking in and around Bluefields.  I mean, who wants to live in a gated community on the other side when the right side's the up and coming place to be?
     A couple of internationales were guests at False Bluff just before Christmas.  She's from Argentina, he's Dutch, and they've added Nicaragua to the list of places they call home: they bought property about a kilometer north of us before they returned to London where they live...just in time for the birth of their baby in early January.

     And their new son has a Miskito name...true internationales.

(I thank the photographers of these photos.)

Why the hell...

...am I in Virginia right now?

     It's 3 degrees in Richmond!

Watching the grass grow

     Years ago when I first began learning about Nicaragua, there was a guy from the U.S. who lived in RAAN (the opposite of RAAS) who frequently posted on a Nicaraguan blog (that didn't survive) about his hobby of 'watching the zinc rust.'  This was a joking reference to how fast metal roofs were eaten by the salt in the constant Caribbean breeze.
     Since we don't have metal roofing at False Bluff, what we do instead is watch the grass grow.
     An earlier blog post here tells of my determination early in the project to get a particular type of grass to grow here: http://falsebluff.blogspot.com/2013/05/bermuda-grassmaybe.html.
     It's a particular grass that grows all over Big and Little Corn Islands and in a very few places in Bluefields....which is where our grass at False Bluff got its start. The effort began with tiny pieces I pulled from a crack in the sidewalk along Bluefields' main street - about as much of the grass as could be stuffed into a shoe box.  
     Planted at the base of a few coconut trees, which is where it seems to thrive, our small start took hold and spread; and we then stole hand-sized pieces from these locations to plant elsewhere.
     And here it is, growing strong and spreading, unfazed by the salty breeze...

How to grow sugar cane

     As part of our ongoing gardening/learning experience, we planted two rows of banana trees between the Caribbean and the garden in an effort to reduce the damage of the ever cool but salt-laden breezes. The banana trees are producing but their leaves suffer from salt damage and that'll eventually reduce their ability to produce.
     So, between the banana trees and the Caribbean we've planted two rows of sugar cane. The thin leaves of the cane don't seem to suffer as much from the salty breeze and when fully mature the plants are almost as tall as the banana trees so we're hoping for protection for the banana trees as well as for the garden.
       Cut some stalks of sugar cane. Strip the leaves off and slice the stalks into pieces about eighteen inches long. Drop these pieces into a shallow trench, or in our case two shallow trenches. 

Here's trench one being filled with the pieces of cane...

  

     

     Then cover the pieces of cane (Lillian is supervising).

     And wait a couple of weeks...

Housing...an option we can use at False Bluff

Nicaragua has a house-building option I've never seen before. It's what I call a 'kit house.' A buyer can configure the rooms and porches of these cement-based houses in most any way s/he likes, sometimes using block to add to the pieces that come with the kit. And so, at least based on what I've seen in RAAS, there's a pleasant amount of variety in the interior layouts - and thus the exterior shapes - and in the porches.

The pieces of these houses are manufactured in the western part of the country and are, according to engineering specs, capable of withstanding some pretty severe weather. Since we have such easy access to False Bluff from Bluefields, building this type of house in our Caribbean setting is a nice option....and the price is right.
As of just a couple of years ago you could buy the basic kit, including shipping to Bluefields, for about $2500: one bedroom, living room, kitchen, and bath. The kit prices may have gone up since I asked, but they're probably still eminently affordable.

In one Bluefields neighborhood a favorite house of mine, unfinished, has three bedrooms - with the standard living room, kitchen, and more than one bath - and under roof with a really nice porch, the owner had managed to spend about $10,000.

Also unfinished is this house. I don’t know how many bedrooms or baths this one has but it's got a nice layout. In this house it's easy to see how the finish coat covers all the seams, just the way a finish coat would cover seams in a house built entirely of block.

Here now: red bananas

     In a blog post I uploaded just over a month ago were three pictures of a tiny new red banana tree taken over a three-week period; and another picture showing a nearly adult red banana tree photographed under the new power lines (where many of our banana trees are planted since they pose no threat to the power lines).
     In that post I wrote that for some reason red banana trees grow taller then their yellow banana producing cousins...and that since we didn't have any red banana trees producing yet, the picture of the red bananas in the post was not of bananas at False Bluff.
     That was all in the December 14 blog post. Things have changed. The bananas in this picture are now hanging on the tree under the power line that was shown in that December post.  

(photo taken by Jose Gonsalez)

Limes, already

     The lime trees at False Bluff have been in the ground less than four years, seedlings planted when they were about a foot tall...and they're producing.  I made limeade from two of these.  Excellent.
     Soon we'll have oranges and a host of other fruit.  

     Not yet, but soon.  I took some 'moro' blood orange seeds to a friend in Bluefields who had almost a hundred percent germination. We divided the seedlings among three of us and the ones at False Bluff are growing well. I really like the thought of orange juice from blood oranges in a few short years (this picture does not show our fruit or juice).

Tropical Caribbean living?

     I just read this article about lessons the author had learned while living on a tropical island for two years:

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/amanda-walkins/lessons-learned-living-on-a-caribbean-island_b_6225300.html

     Among the lessons not mentioned in the article, a major one is access. 

     Did you know that sometimes people have a hard time getting to an island on which there's no airport?   And if you're going to live on an island with an airport, you might as well live in New York City which, while not in the tropical Caribbean, has both an island and an airport...and any kind of light bulb you might want (see article).        
    Sometimes people heading to an island where there's no airport - for instance Little Corn Island, Nicaragua, or most privately owned islands - can't reach the 'get away' because the sea's too rough for the 'get to.'   In fact the access problem is a reason some people who've purchased an island get rid of it, usually to someone so caught up in the romanticism of island life that access is the last thing considered before that new owner signs on the dotted line.
     Unless an island is privately owned, most islands are tourist destinations; and that's great for the tourists because even tourists need a destination.   But sometimes, if you're really planning to live in a place, tourists aren't the best neighbors.   After awhile, even the people who are the island's original occupants get tired of tourists despite the money the tourists spend.
    But if you're really thinking about a tropical Caribbean life for yourself, rest assured that there are options that present the good things the article mentions minus the things like watching tourists adjust to "Island Time" or not being able to get just the right lightbulb. 
    Nicaragua's Caribbean coast presents all the good things mentioned in the article - and more.   
    It's the up and coming option for those looking for what's good without much that's bad. 

Orchid nursery: in bloom

     An orchid in one of the pictures of the orchid nursery that's located right behind the kitchen (see October 4, 2014 post),  is blooming...and in this case a picture is, indeed, worth a thousand words.

Bananas as finger food

     Red banana trees may grow taller than yellow banana trees but red bananas themselves are little - they're short and stubby compared to the fruit of most yellow bananas.
     But the fruit of at least one of the varieties of yellow bananas we grow at False Bluff could be considered finger food...it's tiny!  Even the small red bananas are bigger than these babies.

Papaya flower

     Up close and personal.

Red bananas

      Never ate one of these until my adventures began in Nicaragua...never even knew there were such things as red bananas. Short and stubby, the flesh of the banana isn't what's red, it's the skin. The eating part of the banana is a cream, almost white, colored flesh and the taste is very sweet.  The bananas shown here are not from False Bluff because most of our red banana trees are only recently planted.

     Back in Virginia I found some red bananas offered in a local grocery store and bought a few to enjoy a taste I'd gotten to know in Bluefields...and found that eating these that had landed in Virginia was like eating the bottom of a tennis shoe. This probably had something to do with the fact that it must have taken weeks to get the bananas to Richmond; and that by then they'd kind of lost their freshness...but that's only a guess.
     It took a couple of years for us to find some starter plants since no one in the Bluefields area seemed to grow this type of banana. I think our starters came from one of the Corn Islands. Wherever we got them, I'm glad they're part of our growing collection of fruit trees.
     Here's one of the newly planted trees (with a stick marking its location so we don't walk on the baby).

week one...

week two...

week three...

(you get the idea)

     And here's the oldest one we've got which will probably produce in a few months. A red banana tree grows taller than the trees that produce the more commonly known yellow bananas. Here it's stretching for the sun. We're planting a lot of bananas in the right of way, because even the taller ones won't ever be a threat to the power lines.

     Interestingly, the stalk of the banana tree is red, sort of like  the trunk of a plantain tree.  Here are shots of a red banana tree and a yellow banana tree growing companionably side-by-side at False Bluff.

Red banana tree trunk

Yellow banana tree trunk

   

In the sand

     Tracks, shells, and crab house....

Hibiscus: the collection grows

     The second variety of hibiscus recently added to our False Bluff collection.  The blossom of this one is about eight inches across and the color almost burns!  My camera sure doesn't do this justice.