Banana education

Banana pancakes with chocolate chips!!! Yummy

My rat did not fall for the cheese in the trap I think he is just too fat to fit in it! He/she did manage to get itself attached to both of the sticky pads we had put out. Unfortunately these are intended for mice so the rat managed to escape them. Now we have a bald rat hiding somewhere.

Doug and I went for a run this morning and met with two people to show us apartments. Neither are any better than what we have. We then ran up to the Monteverde institute. Very interesting, I should have done that sooner. Their mission “Our Mission is to advance sustainable living at the local and global level through place-based education, applied research, and collaborative community programs.” http://www.monteverde-institute.org I was given two contact names. One for potential volunteer work and the second for possible private Spanish lessons.

It was a laundry day today, not very sunny out but windy which seems to work almost as well as a hot sun. This reminds me of the days I use to help my Granny do laundry with her old ringer washing machine. Wash… put through the ringer… rinse…put through the ringer… hang to dry. The only difference is I have a spinner instead of a ringer. Miss you Granny 

We made macramé owl’s the other day when we were bored. This is something else my Granny taught me when I was much younger. OK I will admit ‘we’ started the owl’s ‘I’ finished the owls. It turns out Doug is not a big fan of macramé.

The machete was not sharp enough or we were not strong enough to cut the bamboo so I picked up a cheap saw. It immediately broke and I had to buy a new blade for it but Doug finally managed to cut up his bamboo tree. We have new respect for the people on survivor!

I have managed to freeze, eat, bake and give away most of our bananas but we have another batch about due to be cut down. I decided this time I would do my homework first. (especially since Meguel told me ours were hanging upsidedown LOL. As I mentioned before, the banana is a perennial, not a tree. It replaces itself. It takes 9 months to a year to grow. It flowers in the 6^th or 7^th month.  The banana itself is part of the flower. From what I gather there are two parts to the flower, the female part which is the banana grows at the top of the flower and then the male part grows at the bottom. The bananas form and continue to grow while the flower at the bottom keeps getting longer and loosing petals. Once it has finished flowering you can harvest the bananas. The bananas are harvested while still green. I’m not sure I got all that right ??

It is hard to see but this one is still young. The flower part is very short.

This one is about ready. The flower part is really long.

This video is pretty cool. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRPVDzgaIbA  Let me tell you those bunches of bananas they are carrying are VERY heavy. I think I already mentioned that we saw many banana plantations when we went to Puerto Viejo last week.