Call me a farmer

I did not inherit my parents' green thumbs. To be honest, playing in the dirt was never my thing, but there have been rare occasions when I felt inspired to plant something. After our pool was built, I placed large flowering pots and palm trees around the deck. One summer, I tried growing herbs, and during springtime several years, I tended to the hanging plants on my front porch. After a month or so of watering and conversing, I become tired of the heat and the effort it takes to maintain plants, and more often than not, they wilt, die, or never grow. My husband will tell you he takes over responsibility from any of my attempts--yes, that is true.

I have more of a blue thumb--from ink--than I do a green thumb.

My father's thumb planted flowers and trees. My mother's thumb cultivated items first in our kitchen before they went into the ground. She'd take the seeds from the food we'd devoured, jab them with toothpicks, so they rested on either side of a cup of water, and those cups sat on our kitchen sill until green shoots appeared. Avocado pits were a favorite of hers. Eventually, after moving to Florida, she took to growing pineapples.

You can read HERE and HERE, where I wrote complained about having to maintain her plantation of pineapples when she was forced into a wheelchair. She'd sit in it and direct, pointing at this plant, pointing at that plant, and making me bend over in uncomfortable positions to trim the leaves and clear out the debris from the pots. I was always a sweaty mess when I was finished, bleeding from holes in my arms where I'd get poked from the plant's spiky leaves. Frankly, I think they were telling me to leave them alone. I mean, how much pruning actually goes on at a real plantation? My gues--very little.

My mother always wanted me to take the plants home and put them in my yard. She thought they'd do better in the ground, but while I didn't know if my husband would like a pineapple plantation, I also didn't believe my mother could get along without her plants. So, I never took them home--until she died. Then, I did it as a tribute, especially after I offered her plants to her condo neighbors, and her downstairs neighbor took the most abundant, healthiest plant, throwing it in the garbage so she could use the pot for something different. Lesson learned.

I brought home four plants, I think. Every year I've had a pineapple. Every. Year. Some years I get one, some years more. The little pineapple pops out in April, the month when my mother died, and by July, they are ripe and ready to pick. We take every top from these pineapples and stick them in our yard. We genuinely do have a pineapple plantation, although we've lost a few plants. This year I harvested three pineapples.

This pineapple is the second fruit from a plant near my mailbox. It is from a pineapple top of my mother's plant, and it gave us fruit last year. We picked this fruit second this summer, and some parts of it weren't as sweet, so I used it to make pina colada.

This came from another top we put into the ground in front of our house. It got so large, I had to stake it so it could finish ripening. When it came time to harvest it, all I did was remove the stake, and the pineapple fell over and popped right off the plant. This fruit was very sweet, and we ate it in one sitting.

The last pineapple was from my mother's plant in the backyard. These plants aren't as colorful, large, or as healthy-looking as those in our front yard, and this little pineapple never grew any bigger. I found it odd, so I turned to the Internet, where I learned more than when I originally researched growing pineapples. Most of it entailed getting out into the plantation and getting dirty if I want my next crop to not be as small as this little sucker.

My plants are a ratoon crop and require the least amount of work. Yep. My kind of farming. Unfortunately, ratoon crops grow smaller each year if not plucked from the mother plant and replanted. Ugh. Since my mailbox plant already has three new shoots, I will have to remove these eventually and place them separately in the ground if I don't want them to kill one another off by competing for light, nutrients, etc. 

Looks like if I'm going to continue being a pineapple plantation owner, I'm going to need to invest in gardening gloves. My mother would be so proud.

Florida Spring 2019

Spring in Florida isn't like anywhere else that I've lived. There are very little showers, and rarely do we have gentle breezes and seventy-degree temperatures. For us, spring means raking leaves, pollen, jacaranda trees, and a spike in traffic. It's also the end of the strawberry season, an increase in the citrus rat population, and the beginning of the gator mating season.

Spring kind of sucks in Florida.

I don't have allergies. Thus far, I'm immune to the pollen that falls daily from my large oak tree and covers everything that is in its vicinity; my porch, the roof of my van, the mailbox, the driveway, etc. You can stand on my porch and hear the pollen as it falls. It sounds like it is raining. I have written multiple times about our pollen clean up. About how I can't air out the house by opening windows because the pollen will blow inside and cover my furniture in a sheen of green dust. If we go outside, we track in the stuff on our shoes, our clothes, our hair, and with the pollen comes silkworms. Dangling from the oak branches, these little guys lie in wait to drop on us. We are forever swatting them off each other.

Spring means several weeks of sweeping inside and out. Sometimes twice or more a day.

Darcy is my kid bothered by the pollen. She pops a daily allergy tablet from February through April. When she lived at home, we'd have her strip at the door and shower immediately every time she came home from school or from outdoors. Otherwise, the kid was miserable. Now it seems my husband has decided that his recent cold is an allergic reaction to the pollen.

We slept with the windows up one night, and the next morning he had a runny nose. By that evening, he was in a walk-in clinic, sure that he had a sinus infection. I about fell over. The man NEVER goes to the doctor. He never admits that he is sick. EVER. Yet, now at the first sign of a sniffle, he is at the clinic?

I thought for sure he had to be delusional with fever or something. Uh, no. No fever. Of course, the clinic workers rolled their eyes, patted him on the shoulder, and told him to drink plenty of fluids and rest. Nothing they could do for him on day one of what looked to be a cold. They must have mentioned pollen too because now he showers at night and tiptoes over the pollen in the driveway.

Pollen hangs from the trees, drops, and spreads its seeds all over the ground. It's a mess. You can sweep in the morning and have to do it again in the evening. We pray for April showers just to wash it away. 

Already our temperatures are in the late 80's here in my area. My A/C kicked in a long time ago. The only good thing happening in Spring for me is my pineapple plantation. I usually have at least one flowering plant. I lamented the fact that I didn't have any signs of fruit a week ago, but when I returned from my Spring Break travels, the plant from one of my homegrown fruits had sprouted.

My mother would be so thrilled. This plant started out in a pot, and Tom replanted it in August when we planted the top of our 2018 crop. He planted this one by the mailbox, so I'll need to keep an eye on it. People like to steal pineapples. As do the animals. I'm going to point my camera in this direction just in case.

Happy Spring!

Wrap up of July

Blogging has fallen by the wayside these last few weeks of July. Busy, busy. Let's catch up.

Madison visits - Daughter #1 arrived for an in and out visit. Her plane arrived Thursday night a few minutes before it was legitimately Friday. Tom and I managed to stay awake long enough to collect her from the airport, but she outlasted us by far once we got her home. We crammed several days worth of favorite foods, crazy activities, and a game night into the small period she had before leaving us on Sunday night. Having both girls home was a mother's dream. And a father's dream. We both felt complete with them tucked into their beds at night. If only it had lasted longer...

16th Birthday - We celebrated one of my replacement children's birthday. These are the kids I'm co-mothering because my own children have left the nest. His family and Darcy and I went to an Italian restaurant, took up the entire back corner, and partied until we could no longer party. There was plenty of wine, decadent and rich food, and this delicious double cookie cake. Presents were plenty, and then a week later, Darcy took both kids out for a night of laser tag. We counted the 16th well celebrated.

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Pool Girl - Somewhere amid summer, pool care became my job. Our neighbors had requested some swim lessons for their visiting cousins, and because the girl was ten, I took her on, which meant I needed a clean pool. Usually, when that happens, Tom can't control his urge to return as the master, and he sneaks out at night to vacuum or whatnot. Not this year. It's been my job, and what a time it has been. With the crazy summer rains and the uncontrollable heat, I've worked my butt off trying to keep the pool chemically balanced, not to mention clean. I've suddenly begun rethinking the creepy crawler, which I poo-poohed when we first got the pool. At least in the summer months, that thing would come in handy. Not even my dog can hang outside with me when I vacuum because it is too hot. The job is better done in the water than out of it. Still...right now...today...I have perfection on all fronts.

Harvesting - Each year, I grow a pineapple...or two. Depends on the year. These plants belonged to my mother, who loved sending me out into her plantation to work with these prickly plants. After she died, we transplanted them into our yard, and each year around the anniversary of her death, we get the beginnings of a pineapple--or two. Only one sprung this year, and it was on the plant in front of our house—one of her eldest plants. We picked it this week and shall cut it this weekend. The top of this pineapple will then be put into the ground to join the others in our yard's plantation. Who knows? Maybe in five years, it too will bring forth a fruit.

Cleaning - My friend and her children are beginning a new life. In honor of that new beginning, she is purging, cleaning, and replacing things. I am the leader of whipping everyone into shape so that the dream becomes a reality. To that end, days and days have been spent working tirelessly in her house. We've been taking it one room at a time and have probably contributed a year's worth of garbage to the dump. And yes, we made a trip to the dump to drop off old computer parts and a gigantic television that we somehow got lifted into the car. Thus far, we have knocked out three closets, a laundry room, a pantry, and two bedrooms. We've met with painters, flooring people, mattress salesmen, and she has ordered new furniture. Next week we have a dumpster coming, helpers lined up, and hopefully, the entire house will be purged and ready for a transformation.

Summer is winding down slowly, and the empty nest will soon be upon me again. I've started to panic in losing my kid to college again, but it helps she isn't far. We also have a big family wedding scheduled in September when my nephew ties the knot, so I'll have a weekend with them. I'm looking forward to that.

And that's a wrap. Of July. On to August 2018.

She lives on in the plantation

In the process of showing my family around my house, Jaimie, my number one blog reader, inquired about Connie's pineapple plants. I wandered to the end of my pool deck to point them out and show her the pineapple Tom had made in my mom's honor.

I've written before about my mom's plantation. After she died, I finally did what she'd wanted me to do for years--I planted them in my backyard. Okay, well, my husband planted them.

Five of my mother's plants are in the back yard, and one is in a pot in the front yard. For the most part, I leave them be. My mother had me cutting, trimming, watering, etc., but I've chosen to do what I guarantee the big plantation owners do--ignore them and let them do what they do. Occasionally, I look at them, as I did recently when my friend Robin visited. I pointed out the plant in the front yard, and we had a discussion on shade vs. sun because that pineapple plant is HUGE!

Apparently, I need to roam more often through the plantation because Jaimee and I found this...

I admit I became as giddy as a schoolgirl. It takes one pineapple two years to grow, and in the years my mother worked with pineapples, she only produced three of the fruit. I wrote about them here and here and probably a few other places. The fact that we had a pineapple growing less than a year after her death? It had to be a sign. Hope? Peace? Something!

Then, I turned to plant #2 and OMG! it too had a pineapple! Two pineapples!

But wait! As I turned--HOLY PINEAPPLE--there sprung another from a third plant. My plantation inherited from my mother had THREE fruits on three different plants--plants she'd nursed from the tops she cut off fresh fruit purchased in the grocery store. Plants she continued to baby even from a wheelchair. I got a bit weepy.

Then, I apologized to her for not bringing them home when she'd begged me to because, obviously, these babies needed my soil!

I doubt they will be ripe and ready for the anniversary of her death next month, but you can bet I will toast her dearly with a pina colada when they are--because what else do you do with pineapple?

Pineapples galore

Connie has grown pineapples in Florida since my kids were small, but after her wheelchair confinement, she upped her production. It lies at the base of the staircase between two condos where anyone going up or down can't miss it. And Connie does not want anyone to miss it.

Madison: "Excuse me, Daddy, but you must pay homage to the pineapples before you go up."

I have been her slave helper, watering, planting, and trimming, and earning more than a few scrapes and cuts for my effort. Those leaves are SHARP! It can take up to two years for pineapple plants to bear fruit, so it was exciting when two plants produced pineapples.

When I returned from my summer travels, Connie had her neighbor pick the ripened fruit. For his efforts, he got one pineapple to share with his wife, and Connie shared the other with Gigi, her evening caretaker, and us. The pineapple was SO sweet--much sweeter and juicier than a grocery store pineapple. The girls were excited to share this experience as it'd been years since their last taste of a Grammy pineapple.

Now Connie is holding classes in pineapple growing to her neighbors, and Madison planted her first pineapple--with the top from the one we ate. All very exciting.

And Connie says she never does anything interesting anymore...

Working the plantation

Me: "Look at my shirt! It's soaking wet--that's how bad I'm sweating! Just look!"

Darcy: "Why are you sweating so much?"

Me: "Because Grandma had me working in the plantation this afternoon!"

My mother has purchased fresh pineapples since moving to Florida. She cuts off the top and then plants it in some soil, hoping to grow another one. In all the years, she's grown maybe three pineapples--mainly, because it takes 18-24 months for maturation. Since her confinement to a wheelchair, the pineapples are entertainment, as are the herbs she grows in her kitchen. The plants are at the foot of her condo's outside staircase leading, and every time she descends, they are examined. Then, I am put to work per her instructions.

Connie: "Get scissors and snip the dead ends off of that one. Take the hose and water them. Don't be afraid, give them a good soak."

I have watered, trimmed, and even planted new pineapple tops, and I've been poked and stabbed by their razor-sharp leaves multiple times until my arms were bloody. Apparently, my effort has paid off. Two of the eight plants have sprouted pineapples!

Connie is beside herself with joy. If she can just keep the lawn men and their weed whackers away from the plants, she will set up a little stand after harvest. I've told the neighbors we will be selling pina coladas.

In my excitement at actually helping to grow food, I researched and learned more about growing pineapples. If any of my readers have the interest to join Connie's pineapple bandwagon, look no further. 

• Pineapples are full of nutritional vitamins and minerals and are naturally sweet.
• They are the only edible plant in the bromeliad family.
• The plant is native to southern Brazil and Paraguay.
• Columbus was the first to bring the pineapple to Europe, but it was challenging to grow in the European climate.  
• In the late 1600s, pineapples were grown successfully in a hothouse, but only royalty could afford them. That is why the fruit is called the fruit of the Kings.
• Pineapples represent good fortune and hospitality because they were a symbol of royal favor, and people were welcomed with pineapples as gifts.
• That is why we often see pineapple motif carved into buildings or as decorations on top of bedposts.
•  Florida used to be one of the largest pineapple producers in the U.S. After 1930, climate change made it more difficult, and now Hawaii is the primary grower of pineapples in the U.S. 
• Pineapples can be grown in a pot or in the ground.
• Pineapples take their time growing. It can take anywhere from 2 to 4 years for the fruit to be ripe for eating.