Five Favorite (Growing) Things

May has got the jump on June in terms of things "bustin' out all over", and here are five things that I'm particularly happy to see growing:

NEW FLOWERS

Our naughty dogs do a great job of protecting our property but they get excited and push against our fence, which started to lean out alarmingly. The Pirate put guy wires along the parts that were most vulnerable, and I bought some bougainvilleas that will end up filling out all along the fence. The nice thing about bougainvilleas is that they have thorns - not terribly big ones, but enough to deter dogs - so they do double duty: keeping the dogs from the fence and beautifying an otherwise unused area.

BABY BANANAS

We're seeing more and more baby bananas on our banana plants, which means that a mere 6-9 months from now we'll have a lot of bananas! It's amazing to watch them first show up, then get bigger quickly, but it takes a LONG TIME for them to be mature enough to pick (they should be picked green and ripen off the plant).

BABY CITRUS

Some of the first things we planted here were citrus trees. Unfortunately our spanish wasn't very good at the time so we didn't know what kind of citrus they were (although we clearly had several kinds). One of them bore fruit a few months ago and we found out that it's a sour orange (a type of citrus common in northern Africa and the Arabian peninsula and other hot places). I just found some new fruits on the same tree - it promises to be prolific. Sour oranges are used in place of lemons in cooking, and have their own exotic flavor.

BABY STRAWBERRY GUAVAS

I LOOOOOVE strawberry guavas! I can eat as many as you can give me! I was SO excited to find a whole bunch of baby guavas on our guava tree (although it's still bush size).

And now for something from the animal kingdom:

BABY GOATS

Our forest granddaughters are in 4H and they raise goats. Two of the goats just had kids. The first set (goats generally have two kids at a time) was two males; the second set was two females. The girls are slowly building up a milking herd. Neighbors buy their goats' milk (it's healthier for you than cow milk, and tastes great), and one of our granddaughters has gotten into making goat cheese.

For favorites of a completely different type, go to Hallie's blog, Moxie Wife, and see all the neat things that people have to share!