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August has brought with it an abundant harvest of papaya in my backyard. I patiently watch them turn the distinctive orangish and yellowish color, trying to wait out that perfect moment when they will achieve their optimum ripeness. I'm not the only one watching too, as the birds will beat you to it if you wait too long.
The origins of this harvest all started a few years ago when I found two healthy-looking papaya growing behind my trash can. The chickens aren't all bad, sometimes they do things like plant papayas for me in the most unexpected places. If you don't know how they plant them, think about how nature is one of the most miraculous miracle workers.
The papayas could not be grown in the spot behind the trash can, so eventually I found the time and energy to relocate them to a more favorable location where they would be happier. Skip forward a few years and those little papayas are now giant and paying dividends with two dozen or so partial breakfasts.
The papaya that is doing the best of the two, I found behind my trashcan has had a steady fertilizer of wrasse fish that I've caught and other reef fish. I had one trusted friend tell me that burying fish at the base of your papayas is the best fertilizer and they don't stink as much as other fertilizers like chickens. I've given my papaya trees traditional fertilizers as well, but do not feel great about introducing chemicals to the aina, so I attempt to try to use natural fertilizers as much as I can.
These natural fertilizers have included mice that end up on the wrong side of the glue trap, the natural presents the chickens leave behind, giant African land snails (I usually crush them with my slippa before burying them), and compost I add as the chickens make their perpetual holes at the base of the tree digging for insects.
Despite all these fertilizers both organic and nonorganic alike, my papayas are nowhere near the size of some of them I see around the island that swell to the size of mini footballs under the careful eye of the gardener.
Nonetheless, this year's harvest from the fruits of my labors has produced the sweetest papayas this paniolo has ever tasted.
Maybe that's just my mind telling me that's the case, but they have been a pleasure to enjoy and cultivate over several years. It makes it even better the big papaya tree in my backyard was almost lost just about a year ago when a termite-ridden ironwood fell in my backyard and nearly took out the whole papaya tree, stopping just short, but still sawing off the important top section in the fall.
I thought I had lost it then, but it exploded in a defiant grasp of survival by doubling in size and establishing itself. It reminds me that no matter what we think of growth, it comes at times when it is needed for survival.