DELIGHT IN THE PROCESS (#BANANABUNDANCE) [NE 021]

DELIGHT IN THE PROCESS.

Last summer we went over to Jerm’s buddy’s house for a BBQ."🍌

We fell in love with their backyard – same size and shape as ours, but with gorge grass, comfy seating, and beautiful banana trees for tropical ambiance, it felt totally different.

The very next weekend, Jerm bought two truckloads o’ sod and planted five banana trees in our tiny backyard.

Paradise in progress.

Once we had a pretty green space to look at (vs the dead grass situation we tolerated for quite a while), we started a new habit of opening the shades to our lanai every morning.

We would collectively admire the pretty green leaves, sprouting, unfolding, reflecting prismatic water droplets, blowing in the breeze, doing what banana leaves do.

Fast forward to now, less than a year later.

Opening the blinds to this pocket of paradise is literally the first thing I do when I come downstairs each morning.

There is a family of TWENTY trees back here. (Don’t ask me what we’re doing with them when we move. TBD.) Once the flowers and fruit started showing up, we were super excited but not quite SURE what to do next.

We let ’em grow.

Then a couple of weeks ago, Jerm cut a bunch down as an experiment.

Time to test the waters and see if they’d ripen.

This first bunch has been sitting on our front porch lookin’ pretty for a while now.

In the last couple of days they’ve started to turn yellow.

I finally decided to snap one of the teeny ones off today, and Deke, our resident banana connoisseur, enjoyed no fewer than four of them with his lunch.

!!!!!!

I may not know much about the lifecycle of bananas — but I DO know there is a beautiful lesson in patience, faith, and delighting in the process here.

It’s significant to note that we didn’t plant the trees *for the bananas.* We planted them because we wanted to enjoy them, exactly as they were.

We appreciated them at every stage.

And they grew.

And they multiplied.

Surprised and delighted us.

And now they’re literally bearing fruit.

#bonus: they’re saving me a trip to commissary (+ we have more than enough to share!).

There all plenty of other life lessons I can (+ will) pull from my life as an organic banana farmer, but for now the main takeaway is this:

Set the vision.

Plant the seeds.

Trust the process.

To quote the beautiful people of Motunui:

The island gives us what we need. 🌴🍌