Here is a gallery of fruits in season. We are so fortunate that even with the extended dry season, the fruit trees still continue to bear. Mangoes are my definite favourite; I remember buying them in the supermarket in Scotland and they were as hard as rocks. Sometimes they wouldn’t even ripen at all! It’s wonderful that I don’t need to buy these from the supermarket anymore…I have them in my own backyard.
This is the season for mamey sapote; when you cut them in half, the flesh is orange-brown with a thick consistency like avocado. They have a very intense caramel flavour and are best eaten chilled.
The wax apples are starting on our trees; however with the drought, they look very small. The upside of this is that due to the reduced water content in them, they are very sweet.
You would think that money would buy you everything that you needed; not necessarily so… as we invested in new super-duper sized guttering for the house recently. We had a test run with a little rain last week and it was dripping all over the place! Gnome went out to inspect and found that that every single joint had warped with the heat of the sun!
A few months back at an Elixir Tasting at Cotton Tree Lodge, I took the liberty of describing the plethora of jobs that Gnome had undertaken in working independently on the farm. Not only has he been a medical doctor for 20 years but he is the on-site engineer, mechanic, plumber, electrician, farmer, soap-maker, wine/ liqueur maker, herbalist and generator of great and amazing ideas. One woman in the group after listening to the description said gleefully,
We have been hearing all sorts of weather predictions and looking at reports on the Internet with forecasts of hot, dry weather…forever (well, it feels like that anyway). This morning we were sitting down with our cups of tea (can’t take the Scottish out of either of us…still like a cup of tea to hit the spot) and lo and behold! Grey clouds gathered right over us and it started raining. What a relief! It wasn’t torrential but it was enough for the plants and trees to quench their thirst for a wee while. This is one of the longest dry seasons that we can remember. Every year, the season tends to end abruptly and we are usually left thinking,
The truth is that we are actually both very healthy and fit from this lifestyle…a lifestyle that we like to promote to all our patients…we reckon that the only way to give advise is to do it (not just talk).
It has been a few months since the new market opened in Punta Gorda, Toledo. I will take more pictures next time for some of our readers that don’t live in Toledo. For the town locals, this is to let you know that our 
