Lately it has been rather difficult to post due to the immense heat (in the mid to upper 90’s). Our computers have been literally smoking, and to top it all off, we have been without reliable internet access for the past week, due to yet another internal glitch on the side of our internet provider. Every day we hear yet another story – we lost power to the server, we are unsure as to exactly what the problem is, we are waiting for the correct part, to finally – we are upgrading….!?  Wonder what their story will be tomorrow?!? We are hopeful that they can resolve their problems very soon.

Due to the many fires in the vicinity and the immense smoke permeating through the area, we have been unable to run our trusted swamp cooler, as that would drive the smoke even further into the house. The test kitchen has been placed on hold, because, quite frankly, turning on the stove or oven with already excessive temperatures in the house, doesn’t sound promising. Raw food is the only solution and much healthier as well.

As you might have already guessed from previous posts, mangoes are one of our favorite fruits. We picked up a case of mangoes, grown in Mexico, during our last Costco run (their giant walk-in cooler felt so great  😉 ).  We enjoyed our mango smoothies and mango lassies,  and just plain fresh fruit mangoes,and then decided to experiment with growing a mango tree from one of the seeds. This took us right back to our homeschooling days, where science experiments, in varying stages of development, were sitting on window sills and shelves throughout the house. This particular experiment took off right away but is looking a little sad right now, and curiously doesn’t resemble any mango tree we have ever seen. Zucchini maybe, but mango? Take a look:

And here is a closer look at the newly developing blossoms:

After the first leaves and blossoms developed, we researched this curious looking mango species on wikipedia. Our sweet little plant doesn’t even remotely resemble any of the trees shown there.

As you can see this fine specimen has completely different looking leaves.

In deepening our own research, we learned that the mango belongs to the genus mangifera,  which consists of numerous tropical fruiting trees in the flowering plant family Anacardiaceae and that many cultivars are monoembryonic and must be propagated by grafting, or they do not breed true. The question remains: What has this been crossed with? To us this species appears to be more closely related to a zucchini, cucumber, or pumpkin.

We would love to know what it is and will post updated photographs of our experiment over the next few days. The blossoms might be opening in a day or two. Perhaps there are some curious biologists among our readers who could shed a little light on this for us. We would love to learn. Let us know, by posting below. We welcome any and all thoughts.