Garden Work on a Sunday

The day started early - as usual - listening to the radio about any news of cyclone "Gelane". Fortunate it had weakened during the night, but still there were expected rain and local thunderstorms. Happy about rain, I put all the flowerpots on the side of the porch that is not covered and the plants will get some needed water (when it rains). It didn't look like it was going to rain, so I put on a washing machine too. Thereafter I swept the porch and discovered one banana tree - with a huge bunch of bananas - had gone down on the ground during the night. The bananas were on the ground and guess what was in front of it?! A wasp nest!!! The wasps here seem to be more aggressive to what I'm used to at home, so no way I wanted to cut off the bananas! DH equipped with a box of "DOOM", managed to spray the insect killer on them, but not all of them died.

I have mentioned earlier how fast everything grows in this tropical climate. Last year, a "lila" tree started growing from a seed in our garden. None of us expected it to grow as fast as it did. It had become too big already and we didn't want to think of how huge it ends up in a few more years.

The decision was to cut it down, which we did today - while waiting for the rain! :)

First DH had to get the ladder and cut off the branches,

before he was able to cut the trunk.

The branches were quite soft and easy to shred. We bought the shredder a couple of years ago and I really love it! I love shredding branches and re-use it in the garden. There are branches from different trees that are not suitable for shredding, like banana leaves, palm leaves and not to forget lemon tree and bougainvillea branches that are full of thorns! I have tried shredding branches from these trees too, but bananas and palms have too much fiber in the branches and as I mentioned; the others have thorns.

The shredded "lila" branches, together with some branches from "bottle brush" and "filao", all ended up in the strawberries and leek bed. :)

Before you read on, do you remember this? The beautiful flowers on the coffee trees. That was at the end of October last year. Look what the flowers have turned out to be! Some of the beans are getting red! MIL has promised to teach me making coffee from "home-grown" coffee beans - the way she did it in "the old times". :)

The wasp nest story didn't end above. DH had to attack them once again with "DOOM" (insect killer). Thereafter he got the rake and attacked them one more time and managed to get the nest out from the bananas! The bananas are saved! :))

It's late afternoon - still no rain from "Gelane" - as meteo predicted! I guess the cyclone has weakened so much that it has kind of disappeared. Or we get the rain tonight or tomorrow...