It’s that time of year again. Early May when the whole town of Rincón seems to clear out. The seasonal folks go back to the (mostly) Northeast of the US, and even people who live here permanently start planning summer vacations. That leaves us die-hards with the whole place to ourselves!  Even the most popular beaches are completely empty! The weather can start to get a little hotter, but at our place under the cool shade of the mango tree, we still have to put on a light blanket at night.

Mango flowers and fruitlets

The other transition is in all the plants. Everything comes alive in the summer. The avocados are beginning to form again and mangoes have been dropping like crazy hitting our cabana roof.

The robles (tabebuia) have bloomed a couple of times. They have these dainty trumpeted purple flowers that the hummingbirds and bees love and when they are finished they slowly spiral to the ground and form a flower petal carpet.

Pink/purple robles

We also have lots of different food growing. We recently saw that our Surinam Cherries were fruiting. These are interesting little fruits that are in the shape of a pumpkin. Sweet but also tart with a distinct, hard-to-describe flavor. Britton and I munched on a bunch of them though.

Surinam cherry AKA pitanga

And we were super excited to see one of our pineapple plants forming a pineapple! We have had some difficulties in growing citrus as well as pineapple. The citrus has all sorts of diseases here in Puerto Rico, and it seems that pineapple often succumbs to root rot. This one, however, is doing great!

Pineapple growing