The destructive rainforest

Only a day ago I was in the chilled air of a northern spring; today I am in the 90+ temperature, 90+ humity of a southern dry season. Belize has a good nine months of rain, a few months where they say the rainfall subsides (though it still breaks the record of any Minnesotan month), then about a month of true dryness and dust.

Dusted is where find myself in my latest gardening folly (read Gardening Belize Style I and II.) I must get the jungle of the last 12 months pulled back into bounds so that I can give a chance to the seeds of my preference to grow.

All my life I have heard about how humans were destroying the rainforest, yet here I look around me and the forest is winning. The "weeds" that grew in the last year dwarf the odd guava or custard apple planted. I hate planting everything in straight lines, but here it is saving my behind as I go "I know there is a craboo tree here somewhere if I just keep hacking forward."

Tomorrow the "bush-hog" man will come and clear with his machine and avoid the plants I identify today. His trimmings will be piled into heaps to rot for a year, then supply the compost for whatever I struggle to do next year at dry time. But the forest will keep advancing completely ignorant that I have been here. One day there will be no trace left, just as the Maya before me, my work will vanish.

An avacado (Persea nubigena var. guatamalensis) shows off her prizes, though only the size of a grape. These will be ripe about July 1. I won't get to try them, but maybe the Quetzal will.