soil

Went for a walk into the forest armed with my snake boots, long pants and sleeves and trusty machete, and my bucket. I’m slowly, slowly tending the cacao trees, removing water spouts and trimming ephiphytes and vines. The main harvest will be September and October, but there are fruits now here and there and none quite ripe yet. For now I’m watching and inspecting and gently clearing paths. My bucket is to gather last year’s pods which I use for compost. The soil here is a heavy clay and all life relies on a thin layer of leaf litter. This mulch is beautiful rich soil in the making. Tree roots spread out rather than dig deep making it quite a common thing to find fallen giants. These rot down over time and become soil. To find a fallen decomposing tree is exciting and allows us to harvest new compost and food for the garden. There is a fallen giant nearby and we have begun a serious mining operation to scoop out the beautiful dark organic matter from between seams of gray and red clay. I’ve taken about as much as I can just now and will have to wait for a bit more decay and a lot of weather and fungus before I can go further. Gardening takes time.