Cherry Poppin' Papa
I'm tired now having spent the morning and early afternoon attempting to un-fuck my coffee plants. On Saturday I spent 80% of my time throwing large pieces of timber and rocks down the hill and 20% pulling strangling vines off of the plants along with other assorted hand weeding. Today was reversed.
The day laborer never showed up which means I still don't have my machete. Everybody knows who he is, but everybody forgets his name and nobody knows where he lives. After about two hours I went next door to bitch at the folks who recommended him, and about thirty minutes after that- at least I had a machete. Spanish Catholic guilt and a dose of bitching can be a good thing. I'm not giving it back until he shows up.
Found my first red cherries today, ain't they cute? When I first started venturing out in the back jungle I counted around 6 plants. As I've chopped, pulled, dug and ripped vines away I discovered that there are around twenty plants right out the back door. I've still got more uncovering to do.
I also wandered across the landlady's property to further define the route for the French drain and found another twenty or so. I would say these things grow like weeds around here were it not for me having to kill a bunch of real weeds just to uncover the plants. A few will have to be nursed back to health or dug up.
I just want to say a few things about 'cleaning the yard' in Panama. For one, it sucks. For two, it's, um, Panama, where things grow almost as fast as you can chop them down. Because of that most people don't bother bagging or otherwise throwing the detritus away, it just becomes part of the ground in fast order. As I chop and toss and dig more and more stuff comes to surface that just wasn't there a minute ago. It's an archeological adventure in a box!
Update: I couldn't resist slicing one open to see the beans. It takes a whole lot more stuff to make a latte out of these things but the town is lousy with people having coffee plantations and the equipment to process it. One of the bartenders at Amigos says his Dad would get a kick out of doing some small batches for me when the plants start kicking.
