Our house, with its fruit trees, is not typical of the homes in our neighborhood.  I’ve been asking questions about the previous owners of the house to understand what motivated them in their gardening choices.  The Lugo family lived in the house for over 10 years, approx. 2006-16.  They were good neighbors but were not the architects of the garden. In fact, those were the years the garden slowly turned into a jungle.  And that jungle would have consumed the whole house and yard had not someone performed minimal maintenance while the house was unoccupied for two plus years.

It was owners prior to the Lugos, an Argentinian family with the name Marcello, who were the gardeners.  And, it must have been a spectacular garden.  There was a magnificent flamboyant tree in the back yard that unfortunately came down in one of the storms.  The hill was terraced and boasted a small citrus grove along with other flowering and fruiting trees.  I wish I could find pictures from that era.

When the 2018 HOA president met us, he pointed to the jungle and gleefully said “Now, that is all your responsibility!”  And it was a daunting one.  I could see there were gems in the jungle but it was hard to decide what to keep.  Luckily one of the workers was tree savvy and made most of the decisions on what to remove.

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Because of the dense growth, some of the trees we saved were growing sideways towards the house in search of the sun.  Some we cut in half, so the new growth would grow straight up.  Others we might have to try and straighten. We found beautiful sea grape, the draped the hill beautifully seeking the sun.  I loved it as is.  Unfortunately, a worker, who I asked to cut specific trees, decided this one need a trim as well.  I am now trying to force the sea grape to grow low to the ground.

Towering above the jungle and identifiable from the road approaching the development are two tall trees.  The first is the ceiba (also known as kapok or silk-cotton) tree tcan grow up to 100 feet tall.  My tree may be 50 feet tall.  Young ceibas have large thorns on them, so our tree must still be young.  One day when I was working on the slope, I slipped and placed my hand on the trunk to stabilize myself.  Ouch, those thorns went right through my gloves.

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The ceiba tree develops a large system of buttress roots. These are roots that grow tall to stabilize the tree.  I’m not sure if I want this tree to take over the front yard, but the ceiba is revered as a sacred tree.  The Mayans believed that this tree connected the underworld, the world we live in and heavens.

The second tall tree is a tropical almond tree, and is very different from the commercial almonds we are familiar with. This tree can grow up to 80 feet. It has large leaves that go from green to orange and red and eventually drop. The fruit is a beautiful deep purple.  It is difficult to get to the pit and small nut within.  The local shops sell a brittle made of these nuts that are as sweet as Indian mithai.  They are delicious, store them carefully as the ants love them too.

I am not sure about the future of both these trees.  While they are unique, they do not have showy flowers and delicious fruits. And we have to clean up after the almond tree.

We found a tree with the most beautiful flowers that Neftali identified as a tree orchid.  Due to an unfortunate series of events, this tree was cut down.  I hope to find one to replace it.  There is another orchid tree in  with white flowers.  It’s leaves close at night, a fact discovered by Ritchie when he was searching for coquis at night.

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One tree I saved but later removed is the noni.  It is believed to be a superfood. It looks funky and has soft yellow wood.  I later learned that iguanas love their leaves and they end up looking like a scraggly mess. That was the end of the noni tree. Or so I hoped.   I now realize under my hill is a sprawling spaghetti-like mess of roots.  It’s like a game of whack-a-mole.  I dig up the tree in one place and it shows up in another place!

It was expensive to deforest and haul the debris away.  I later learned that we have yard waste (in addition to trash and recycling) pick-up included in our HOA fees.  Every week, they pick up bags of yard waste.  And if they see that you have a large pile, like I do at the end of each trip, they send the big truck with robot arms that easily hauls away huge tree trunks. 

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Deforestation is an ongoing process.  Everything grows so rapidly, they continually need to be tamed. The native bushes, brush and vines continue to come back with a vengeance.   Bryan, the owner of Montoso Gardens said “You have to keep putting in the plants that you want and slowly they will crowd out the ones you don’t want.”  This is good advice for life too, isn’t it?