Bananas!

Bananas from the garden, ripening in the kitchen

Garden Bounty

I'm a big believer in growing at least some of one's own food. We are lucky enough that the place we are living has a number of mature fruit trees and over the last couple of years we have planted various other plants around the garden.  Last week I took a look a wander through the garden and counted up the number of different edible types of plants in our garden and I came up with twenty!

Our garden is all fairly haphazard and experimental but one of the things I plan to do in the next few years is to plant an edible forest garden and the quest is on to find a suitable plot of land to do it, so we'll see how that goes over the next few months.

• Coconut
• Lemon
• Vaoca
• Blackberry
• Carrots
• Broccoli
• Passion fruit
• Papaya
• Litchis
• Choux
• Avocado
• Banana
• Cour de Beouf (Custard Apple)
• Cherry tomato
• Citronelle
• Tomato
• Pepper
• Strawberry
• Rosemary
• Mint

At the moment we have large amounts of litchis, passion fruit and bananas ripening so we are going to be sorted for fruit for the next few months!

Coconut

Lemons

Vacoa

Blackberry

Carrots

A very sad and savaged broccoli

Passion Fruit

Papaya

Litchis

Choux

Avocado

Banana

Cour de Beouf

Cherry tomatoes

Citronelle

Tomato

Pepper

Strawberry

Rosemary and Mint!

NOT The Reunion Island Cardinal but rather the Red Fody (Foudia madagascariensis)

Reunion doesn't have too many mammal and reptile species but it does have lots of birds.  For some reason I've been noticing the sound of birdsong more over the last few weeks, it may be the time of year or just that I'm paying more attention!  One of the more colorful birds that we see a lot of is (I think) the Reunion Island cardinal and I managed to get a couple of snaps of it on my recent walks (the first on my phone, which explains the quality).

A Reunion Island Cardinal  Red Fody and a daytime moon

Reunion Island Cardinal Red Fody

A handsome guest!

Had to remove another uninvited guest from the living room, if it was up to me she (or he) could stay and reduce the beastie population in the house but that wouldn't be too popular with Aurelie!
 

Halloween pt 2 - Trick or Treating Island Style

As I mentioned in my previous post Halloween is pretty new here so not everyone knows about it or cares about it.  A good friend of ours (Isabelle) organised trick or treating near us for the day after Halloween. She contacted everyone on the road and found out who was interested and who was not and let them know when it was going to happen.  

It's different to Ireland, at least in this case all of the local kids gathered into a hyperexcited mob and all headed off in a group chanting "On veut des bonbons (we want sweets)!" it's like a group of little thugs trick or treating with menaces if you ask me!

Still everyone had a good time and there was plenty of loot to go around!

Cutie vampire, witch and devil

Collecting loot

Jelly spider!

The trick or treat crew!

Halloween pt 1

For Halloween night we had a little house party for the kids and some of their friends (and parents of course).  We did the same last year and it was lots of fun so this year we put a bit more thought into it and prepared some traditional Irish Halloween games for after a little trick or treating.  

Halloween is a relatively new idea here in Reunion, it seems the idea has come from France which imported it from the US.  It's interesting to see such an Irish tradition creep around the world to this little island on the back of US cultural influence!  So since Halloween is such a novel idea here only a minority of houses stock up on treats so you have to know who to go to.  As we are in a quiet cul de sac the kids visited just three houses (one of which Aurelie sneakily supplied with sweets while the kids were distracted) before coming back to the house to consume some of their goodies and play some games until midnight!

A vampire and Draco Malfoy

Vampire with attitude

The boyz!

Traditional Irish Halloween games

Matthieu giving it a try

Bobbing for apples

One tired vampire!