Not all trees are created equal

Is everyone tired of looking at flowers yet?

I think I've failed to mention this in the blog, but we've moved back onto campus. This happened in March. An opening came up, we were offered it, and off we went. This is my seventh place since arriving 18 months ago (Anna-Marie's fourth; she says her next move will be to the airport). But despite the itinerant feel of it all, we are glad to be back on campus. We are surrounded by grassy fields instead of red dust. And of course all the flowering trees.

The move meant we gave up our coconut tree which was just starting to product ripe coconuts. But we gained two new trees of interest.

Our house is a complex of four small units clustered around a courtyard. The majority of the courtyard is a parking lot, but the perimeter is beautifully planted with thin leaved croton and ginger lily and other tropical plants. Our new home also has two flowering trees, though the flowers are not the main attraction. In one corner of the courtyard is this:

Anna-Marie reported she may actually be getting tired of avocado

These avocados started to ripen in mid-April and while I was in Canada they were in full production. They are huge, about the size of a baby's head, and tasty. The only problem was keeping them for ourselves — though it turned out there was more than enough to go around. We kept 'catching' people outside the courtyard whacking the branches with sticks to knock the ripe ones down.

We had the same problem with the tree at the foot of our driveway:

Small, sweet mangoes

While pineapples are in season all year long, avocados and mangoes are seasonal. Both are available all year round but in April you start seeing more and more of them in the markets, and last April, driving through the country with Ralf and Fortune we passed kilometre after kilometre of stands lining the highway. And each stand is selling a different kind. There are hundreds of varieties of mangoes — in this sense they are like apples — and dozens are available in Ghana. Our tree produces a smallish version, about 10cm in length.