Cappy's Corner

I PLANTED A SEED

Written by Captain Mary on Sunday, September 02, 2012

Less then two years ago, I ate a delicious avocado. I think one of the best, the qualities of texture, nutty flavor and it was big and beautiful. I decided to grow a tree from the seed. Sticking tooth-picks along the side and put it into a glass of water. As the days went by I would watch it on the window sill and anticipated the growth.

I had an avocado tree once that bore two kinds of avocados on one tree, it was an amazing and a great producer of fruit. Hurricane Katrina knocked it over, but with much effort and help with hydraulic jacks, we somehow got her back on her feet. Then along came Hurricane Wilma  and down she came again. It was too much of a shock for the tree and she was cut up and discarded. I missed having avocados and now it was an opportunity to try again.

As the weeks past the seed sprouted in the little glass on the window sill, leaves appeared and it was finally time to pick a location in the yard to plant the seedling. It was too big for the window, yet not big enough to stand alone in the yard. Planted my new seedling in a pot with my composed soil and waited.

You may ask why I get so excited about planting seedlings, well my yard is a jungle with a canopy that rises above the power line, perhaps 40 feet in the sky. When I moved in my house there was only a few plants, very few. Almost everything I planted as young plants or cuttings and now it is a jungle with vines, orchids, bromeliads and staghorn ferns among the now large foliage. If you look up my house on google earth you will see a jungle in the mist of an ordinary neighborhood. I began this jungle in 1998. It seems like a long time, but the joy is watching things growing into a vision I had in my head. Now my vision, even though, seemingly complete is a never ending challenge to make more dense.

Now that the little avocado seedling has reached a size that is ready to stand in its place in the jungle. It began to grow, in less than a year and a half it had reached a size of 15 feet. The blooms began and I was thrilled, but didn't think for a minute that this very young tree could produce fruit. Much to my surprise as the blooms fell to the ground, I noticed a single avocado. Very tiny and my thoughts were that it could not survive the wind and rain of the summer. I was wrong, the little avocado grew and grew, and only when the threat of thunder storm Isaac's did I pluck it from the tree. Not long after,I got to taste the most wonderful flavor of my new edible plant. My avocado stands among the other edible plants in my jungle. I have a Sicilian white fig, bananas, ginger, chives, monstero deliciousa, coconuts, and palm fruits.