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You surely couldn’t help but notice our absence. Did you miss us? You know you did. We certainly missed posting and hearing from all of you.

Of course, life continued over the past month, albeit with a few mishaps. . . hence no posting. Amidst the gargantuan feat of watering our property (we live on an acre of land here in New Mexico), Inge unluckily fell and smashed her wrist on a pesky rock which just happened to be out of place where it didn’t belong. OUCH!!!!:( Not an easy fix, as you can imagine. It required surgery to put humpty back together again. But with with the technical brilliance of an outstanding surgeon, who luckily found all the pieces, she will be as good as new before you know it — with the addition of new bionic enhancements in her wrist But no insurance coverage for any of it, double ouch!!!

Anyway onwards and upwards. Life goes on, new recipes are plentiful, creativity abounds, as does our vegetable garden, which was a first time project this year, and our mystery plant still remains, well, a mystery.

Our previous post on the mystery plant showed the seedling which grew out of a “typical” grocery store variety red-skinned mango. It looked nothing at all like a mango tree, but instead vaguely resembled a strange type of squash or zucchini, but with a really peculiar chemical scent. The leaves also kept turning brown the minute they would form (despite plenty of water, mind you) and even now, after several weeks, the plant has still not grown any larger. All the blossoms immediately died before even opening, and it still fails to thrive. Here is an example of its current sad existence on our kitchen window sill. The blossom you see in the picture is the first one that has shown any promise.

Was it something we said??

After such a miserable failure, what does any normal person do? Go out and buy more mangos. Champagne mangos were the new hot item at our local Costco, so, of course, we just had to see what would come of them. Realizing that this is a different variety, we also wanted to give this plant an opportunity to grow outside. It also came down to a complete lack of space on the window sill. We planted several seeds in one large old pot, and began to water them. Everyday, twice a day, because of our deepening drought, we watered them. And we waited, and waited. . .

Suddenly, after almost a month, and almost having given up hope of ever seeing anything, a tiny seedling emerged. Wow! In the matter of two weeks, it has grown from roughly two inches in height, to its current size seen in the picture below.

Champagne Mango Seedling

Could it be, we actually have a real mango tree on our hands? According to Wikipedia, this seems very likely. This is an image we found of a small mango seedling grown in India.

by Ganguly Biswarup

The similarity is quite striking? Considering that mangos are usually grown in a very moist, or semi-tropical environment — champagne mangos available here are grown in Mexico — we are really interested to see whether our little project can in fact turn into a tree. Living in the high desert with extremely cold winters, this tree, if it survives, will have to become an exotic house plant. Could be interesting if it reaches the natural height of 40 t0 60 ft. and up. Lets hope it’s slow growing.

Have any of you ever managed to grow a mango successfully? What about any other exotic fruit or plants? We would love to hear from you.

Our Little Mango Tree

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