Here are pictures of our land in Thailand when Warren and I visited last year. Two acres of green and growing things...fruiting guava, pomelo, mangos, carambola, banana, annonas, and more. Lots and lots of mangos, mangosteen, longkong, maprangs, rambutan and such planted throughout and going well. As you can see, the folks enjoyed planting trees! All I had to do was casually mention that it would be nice to have this and that, and my mother-in-law would soon be tramping thru her favorite plant suppliers. There were a few times Warren and I feared that we may be left behind in order to have more room for plants in the SUV!
These are pics taken by my wife on the balcony of the little home the folks built there. The GOOD...
Warren and I worked our butts off a few days out there showing the folks proper pruning of mangos. We freaked them out quite a bit at first but they soon warmed up to it. Not only did we have to prune, we had to use bamboo to keep the damn trees from blowing down in the muck. Another lesson for the folks was how not to girdle plants when supporting!!
Warren said his bamboo was THIS big!
As most, if not all, of you know, Thailand was hit by some very bad and lengthy flooding late last year. We're talking weeks and weeks of being under several feet of water! The folk's home was centimeters from being washed out and they built their home much higher than many in the neighborhood did. They did lose all of their jackfruit, several maprangs, and other assorted trees. Oddly, their mangos defoliated quite a bit but bounced back right away and blooming. Our land out in the country wasn't even that lucky. Now the BAD & the UGLY...
So as you can see...not much left. Some of the shade trees on the perimeter made it as well as some guava. But to me...this is a total loss. Hell...even the little pond in front of the house is dead. The folks are going to plant some more bananas, maybe some guava, then clean it up and sell it. The land itself is already below the road and very close to the water table. Too prone to being wet all the time and obviously very prone to flood.
While I'm quite bummed out over this loss, it pains me even more to think back at all of the effort that the folks took to make this place what you saw above. And that was only the fruit trees. On the perimeter, around the home, and out by the road, they had all sorts of plumeria blooming and other beautiful ornamentals in full glory. They were very proud of this place.
The folks have purchased land about 450km northeast of Bangkok which is about 45 meters above sea level. Shouldn't have to worry about floods there. However, I have a feeling it is getting too far north and the plants that I want to be able to grow may not do well there. We are checking into that stuff now. It's hard to have a lot of input into this when halfway around the globe!