July 12, 2009

Tooty-fruitty

One of summer's pleasures in Southern Mexico is the fruit pitaya. Vietnam and Malasia, and some other Pacific nations, have discovered this fruit and are cultivating and exporting what they call dragon fruit. And on Facebook Mafia Wars game, in Cuba, dragon fruit is given as a bonus on jobs done.
Me, I've embarked on some cultivation of my own. Jose Flores placed cuttings in my garden two years ago. Mostly, they were not pretty and took to climbing the walls. The main stem looked it was broken when we started emptying potting soil in the corner of the garden, with the papaya tree at the other end.
The flowers lasted only a few hours and I was remiss in not grabbing the camera. But rains were here and well, I thought, no harm in waiting.
The next day, the flowers were gone and little button like bumps appeared. Didn't catch those either. But now, there are fast growing fruits that at this stage look like artichokes.

They are growing inches in days. Today is sunny. The fruits are going to love it!
My worker is now back to painting the roof. He'll pick a couple papayas on his way in and, with the market bought pitaya, we will have a nice fruit salad for lunch's desert. No need to spend more money than the 50 pesos for the pulled pork, of which there is plenty left. I feel like I'm living the green life! Green Acres is the place for me...



4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Beautiful pictures Zina. I love pitaya. Looks like you will be enjoying a few of your own very soon.

KfromMichigan said...

I love pitaya. They are so expensive here. Last year I paid $5 dollars for ONE. Yeah .. I must be crazy. Can you freeze me some till October ....

IslaZina said...

I don't think they'd freeze well!

Sue said...

Our 'dragon fruit' in Canada does not taste at all like the pitaya here. We've been enjoying it almost every day too for the last several weeks. Miguel claims it is 'medicinal'.