MARY AND THE LITTLE PLANTS
These plants started as little guys, the bananas were ebay mailorder and pathetic looking when they arrived here last spring.

This banana plant was teeny, now look at him.

Meet Crooked, he was a scawny outcast at Home Depot but I recognized his good and gave him a home, now look how big he is.

This Thai Giant was another puny little plant from ebay, these looked pathetic but Mary has worked them up to be huge and jurassic the way we like our plants.

This Majesty palm out by our pool pump was another bargain find, we got him when he was much smaller. We got three of these and have not been very kind to them. In spite of lack of watering, poor sun light and abuse from Hurricane Mathew these palms not only hang in there, they've flourished.

PLANTS - NOV 20 - Bananas, Coconut Palms and More Bananas

We replanted two coconut palms in new B I G pots to have in the pool area, we sent two other coconut palms out to the agricultural area and planted them in the ground.

The Crotons took over the Beverly Hills pots by the pool, their brilliant red colors attracted us to them at Home Depot. The coconut palms that formerly lived in the Beverly Hills pots were completely root bound. Now the palms have lots of room to grow.

Awapuhi

Last year I dug up an overgrown cluster of Awapuhi, and ended up with massive numbers of rhizomes.  This year I planted them all around P2, and they're coming up everywhere.  Can't wait to see the gorgeous blooms in a month or two.

Thai Giant - Colocasia - Doing great

Meet Gigantor.  Back in February or March we got our first colocasia Thai Giant, and even though he got a slow start in the cool winter weather, Gi is clearly ahead of his younger brothers.   The Thai Giant is the largest Colocasia, with each leaf growing to 6 feet long and 5 feet across, and the whole plant growing 9 feet tall.  Can't wait! 

This is one of the younger Thai Giant's....   King Kong.

And Godzilla.

Another view of Gigantor, with three majesty palms behind him to block the wind.

The coolest part of these colocasias and alocasia's is how the new leaf bursts out of the stem of the last leaf...  it emerges and then explodes into a huge leaf.

TEE AND STEG

We refer to these as "the Jurasics" and Mary named them after Dinosaurs.

Traveller Palm Seeds - Planted Saturday 5/21

I bought some traveller palm seeds online from Australia, and Mark and I put them in a high humidity germinating machine on a heating mat. I've read that the germination time is anywhere from 2 weeks to 18 months, so we're not sure what to expect, but we'll see how it goes. It would be amazing to have more traveller palms throughout P2 to go with our gorgeous traveller palm.

Some other updates from this weekend:

• Mark invented a better watering system with a high powered pump pulling water from the pond and going to the new plantings.
• We got 50 St. Augustine sod pieces to rebuild the grass in front of the pond by the house. It looks so plush and the ibis love it. We watered for hours today, and it was so fun to watch the ibis bathing in the showers.
• I planted the rest of the Awapuhi rhizomes around the perimeter and in the island by the house. The early batch of Awapuhi stalks has come up, strong and healthy after the last few rains. Now the 2nd batch should be up in a few weeks, and the stunning red Awapuhi flowers shortly behind.
• Saw our first raccoon babies about 30 minutes ago! A litter of 3 kits made their way down the oak tree while mom ate at the buffet. Three little cuties with the tiniest tails barely 3 stripes on the tails. Awwwwww! This mom was not "Eight", the mom we see every day (eight because her tail has an amazing eight stripes). So eight still has babies up in the tree somewhere.