and..

...the monsoon is here!

And with every monsoon comes this unbelievably lush, well, everything. In just a couple short days, from dry and nearly dead, all the trees, bushes and flowers turn into the essence of life. 

Another thing that comes with the monsoon is mango season. And jackfruit season. And, in general, fruit season.

With four mango trees in our garden, I can’t look at this fruit anymore, but it doesn’t mean I didn’t learn a very valuable lesson in the process. Like the fact that I don’t know squat about fruit trees. Once upon a time, in Europe, things were much easier. Fruits grew on the trees until they were ripe and ready to be eaten, in India, however, it’s a different story. They still grow on trees, but apparently they need a change of scenery to ripen. Chikoos, for example, need good 7-10 days of lying around to change from stone-hard to melt in your mouth. Same with mangoes, they will only turn yellow or red (depending on the kind) after some solid home time. Left on the tree they will only blush unless they are eaten by some impatient animals.

This morning I was confronted by the whole bunch on tiny little green bananas, just sitting next to the kitchen stairs and I suddenly got very nostalgic about all the boring and uncomplicated European fruits.

With that said, I also found out that monsoon is the season for plums and peaches, apricots and cherries, and even pears, but they only grow in some very well hidden location, and definitively not in Goa.
With that said, I need some time to figure out what to do with my new fruity houseguests!

..and P.S. I decided to dig up my poor, halfdead basil and put it in pots and it worked like a magic trick!