Until now, I have mostly thought of heavy rains, hurricane force winds and toe rotting humidity as a bit of a nuisance.  

Not any more, everything has changed with the arrival of our new weather station.  I am secretly rather looking forward to some insanely bad weather.

Checking the dashboard for our new weather station has become something of an obsession.  My daily routine has a new beat.  The routine goes something like: Get out of bed, put in  contact lenses.... check what weather data was collected last night... cup of tea....what does the weather reading say about today.   All day long it gives a comforting justification for being too hot or a bit chilly and whether or not to put on the dehumidifier.   It even dares to have an opinion here on the Continental Divide, where the Pacific and Atlantic weather systems collide, on what is going to happen next which side will win and will we get sunshine or rain.

Today we had 0.52 inches of rain in the afternoon.  Frankly, with all the thunder, lightening and sheets of the stuff coming in through my open window it felt like it might have been more.  Maybe tomorrow.

There are little bundles of coffee plants all  over the farm this week waiting to be planted out.  We are re-planting and re-generating some of our coffee fields.  Now we are in June, well into the Green Season and have the rains to water new plants.   

We are planting a variety of Criollo Aribica coffee to add a little something to the flavor to our existing coffee flavor profile.  We are also chopping down some of the oldest orange trees that are starting to show some signs of disease.   Apparently, some of these trees are 40 years old, almost as old as I am.  

We are also planting passion fruit on some of the larger citrus.  Passion fruits grow well here and we are starting a small collection of different varieties. 

Lastly, I was so impressed by my giant lemon tree, inherited from the previous owner of the farm, that we are putting in a couple more for our own kitchen.  They produce fragrant lemons the size of grapefruit that are beyond delicious inside a roast chicken.

So, although it is a little wet in the afternoons and humidity is mostly above the 70% mold growing benchmark.  This is one of my favorate times of year.

Nothing like those early evening strolls around a wet fragrant garden before dinner.  We are in the Green Season, it rains every afternoon.  Sometimes before lunch, some times after but mostly it clears up in the early evening.  

There is always going to be a big choice of things to write about here in the jungle.   Today, I was not sure whether to post about the curious little Warbler who has fallen in love with my car,  the alarming episode of the very large hairy caterpillar  camouflaging itself in the bristles on the front door mat or my delicious Strawberry Guava.

The Strawberry Guava won.   They were a gift from the couple we bought the farm from six years ago.   Tiny little cuttings at the time, this year they are bearing fruit.   Guava grows well here and we have at least four varieties on the farm but the strawberry variety is my favorite.

They are a delicious little red fruits that look like giant rose hips.   They taste like a cocktail of all my favorite things, passion fruits, strawberries and roses.   Even our four year old gobbled 8 of them in one sitting yesterday.     So far, I have eaten them warm off the tree, poached them and served them with yoghurt and added them to smoothies.   When I have more fruits to play with, apparently Strawberry Guava ice cream is pretty good.

The leaves are glossy and the plant has an attractive compact habit with with real landscape value.    I think it might be time to make more cuttings.

Don't think I've learned so much in years:  Never mind Spanish lessons and trying to keep up with all those Latin ladies in the Zumba class.

This week, expanding internet know-how is keeping those little grey cells working hard.  Learned how to navigate and edit our new web site, what it means to blog, how to take a video and embed it and so on.  This is just the beginning, there are quite a few challenges ahead of us before we can share our coffee.  We will be taking you along with us on this journey as well as describing our every day life here on a small coffee farm in Central America.

So, thought I would start pretty much as I start everyday having dropped off my daughter at school.   With a mini-tour of how you would enter our farm if you ever visited. You will see the coffee bushes to the left under the large shade trees. 

It is the rainy season here which means it rains most afternoons.  This was taken at about 2.00pm on Saturday afternoon in a short break in the showers.   It took us about three and a half minutes to walk down the driveway.