After
about an hour of bending and stretching and
pulling noxious wild plants out of my flower
beds on a 90 degree swamp box day, I give up,
take an outdoor shower and sit in the shade of
the Thrinax Parviflora, or Florida Thatch
palm, as I try to classify the surrounding
palms. But first, before I attempt to
record some of the 3,800 species of palm trees
growing in our garden, I make myself a
tropical drink full of ice and bananas, mangos
and coconut juice from my garden, and
store-bought strawberries. Just to add a
little bit more punch to my pink drink, which
I call, 'Alinka's Sin,' I pour in grapefruit
and pineapple juice, and plenty of white rum
with a jigger of dark rum, then stick a little
paper parasol in the white flesh of the
coconut meat to complete this delight.
(It just doesn't taste as good without the
umbrella! And after drinking a couple of
these, you might wish to also throw in a
baby aspirin!)
My handwriting is still legible as I attempt
to spell Ravenala Madagascariensis, vulgarly
known as "Travelers palm," which is
also a member of the banana family and hides
the ugly electrical poles. Like bananas
which grow on the east side of my pool, water
is stored in the bases of their leafy stalks.
Being a romantic I thought about purchasing a
Mexican Blue Palm, or Brahea Armata, because
in the moonlight, the blue leaves of this
beautiful palm look almost white, giving it a
ghostly appearance.
The previous owner of
this property must have either been in the
landscaping business or retired with nothing
to do but plant palm trees, because by the end
of the page, I had counted about 70 trees. My
favorite of all the palms is the Triangle palm
(Neodypsis Decaryi) originally from
Madagascar, which sits imperiously in the
middle of the fountains at the end of our
pool. The palm tree lover knew what he
was doing ten years ago because he planted
them in strategic places, as if to defy
neighbors and nature. He was determined
to have shade where he wanted it, not where
the birds decided. As my feet started
stinging from the hot sun, I continued
classifying the Wodyetia Bifurcata, which I
like to call "Foxtail palm," otherwise
people think you are just showing off!
Then I dived into the pool because it was
getting hotter than Dante's Inferno, and I did
not want to get alligator skin as Dr. Dabbah
would never approve! He lectures me
about skin cancer. Malinoma is not a lot
of fun - better to slather yourself in sun
protection, or go indoors in this type of
weather. But I only had a few left to classify.
Since the ice had
melted in my drink I went in to the kitchen to
pour some more 'sin' into my coconut. No sense
wasting good ice with the cost of gas these
days! Boy - that juice tastes great!
I put on a straw hat and took a long sip
of the refreshing drink before I continued my
project. As I continued identifying our
palm trees, I noted the obvious Areca palms
made a good thick hedge as their common
name implies: "butterfly palm,"
and made a note that they had to be
trimmed as our garden was starting to look
like a subtropical jungle. I had been
insultingly pierced in the thumb by a 'Date
palm.' We have two of these mammoth monsters destroying
our fence. These menaces are native
to Egypt but are found in abundance in the
United States. Their fronds can
grow up to 20 feet long and are dark,
feathery, with sharp spines which cause
inflammation and require medical
attention to extricate. Even with gloves on
one penetrated my thumb which required
surgery.
So of
all the palm trees that grace our garden, my
favorite is still the coconut palm.
In this climate, you can plant the nut and
it will grow quickly into a useful tree.
Palms like organic fertilizer, whether
cottonseed meal, ground steamed bone meal, guano, manure,
or commercial fertilizers. But the hot
summer day was starting to make me dizzy, so I
took another sip from the straw in my coconut
and thought, 'why am I doing this?'
Who cares about these palm trees?
The guy who planted them
here in the first place must have known about
the usefulness of the Coconut Nucifera because
as he discarded his "containers"
they sprouted up in the ground. I
wonder what he put in them?
By
now, I could not read my writing, the black
ink had merged with the chlorine of the
blue water, and I gave up trying to record the
trees. After all, I had a good excuse,
it was a sizzlingly steamy,
dizzyingly dreamy, stiflingly hot Florida
day, and the Coco Nucifera had done its job,
it had served as a container for my tropical
concoction; but now it was time for a siesta!
Alinka
