We had given up on getting fruit from our guava tree, which sprouted from a seed and after five years is now as high as our roof, assuming based on what a friend said that if it didn't bloom after three years it was "macho," a boy tree. Because it conveniently planted itself where I later had room for a compost pile—back when I was not working as much and had more free time for such endeavors in the Pre-"We-Got-a-Rat" Era of living in this house, when a compost heap seemed less like feeding rodents—it grew ridiculously large and robust quickly. Its fruitlessness seemed another ironic mockery of my failure as a tropical gardener—along with my stolen bags of topsoil, birds eating my tiny red beet shoots, aphids covering my kale (since the netting blocking out the birds offered them great protection), and my tomato plant which made one dime-sized (or, rather, five peso-sized) tomato.
But this week Abigail noticed that the tree has some pretty amazing bright red flowers. So we're hopeful. The mother tree (our neighbors cut it down right after this tree sprout came up) had these amazing yellow guavas that you can't buy at the grocery store (they only sell the thicker, not as tasty green ones).
I should add that today Owen looked online and saw that a tree starting from seed should take eight to ten years to bear fruit, so we may actually be years ahead of schedule. Probably due to the former compost pile at the tree's base.
Here are some other spring blooms at our house:
The aloe flower is, frankly, a little ugly, but when it blooms (which happens once a year at most for just a day or two) in the next few days we'll get this cute little bird that comes to drink its nectar each time.
This wild orchid is deceptively flashy-looking in a picture. The blooms are so small, few, and subtle that they are almost unnoticeable.
And I don't know what this is called, but it is what is still thriving now that our super-hot spring weather is winning out over the flowers that thrived here all winter.
