banana-sadie-rama

It certainly seems as though I only post about things that grow. Believe it or not I have lots of interests. Some of which include: cell phone map coverage, pool maintenance, and skin moisturizing lotion. Well actually those things happen to consume various sectors of my life and therefore they require more to be known about them.

Before Sadie was born we had a grand idea to plant her placenta under a tree. The tree would then become a symbol of her growth and maturity. As it turns out the group b strep ruined that whole endeavor for us. We had to turn in the placenta, which the midwife randomly saved in our fridge, to the lab for testing and we never got it back. Hindsight, it might have been nice to have a bit of it back, nevertheless we lost it.

We never really got an answer as to why people bury placentas under trees, but we suspect it has something to do with wild animals not being able to get to the tasty flesh if it was under a tree. Really we like our version better of it being a symbol of the child's growth.

We thought long and hard about what kind of tree to plant. By happenstance I stopped into an "exotic fruit" nursery in a slummy part of town. The gentleman, staring saucer eyed with mouth firmly agape thinly suggested we take a look at a banana tree. He happened to get out of me what we were looking for and why...no actually I told him our grandiose plan. He did mention that bananas grow well here in the desert so long as they receive proper care. He also mentioned that it takes severe neglect or acts of God to kill them.

Upon arrival to our house it was proudly proclaimed that we have found our tree specimen. Christie, in feined-excitement, "yeah?" I triumphed by exclaiming, "BANANA TREE!" In true excitement she follow up, "ooh." and then questions about their growth ensued.

We went to the nursery in our excitement and purchased the tree*. 20 bucks for a 5 gallon plant - and we happened to buy a Goji berry plant which is still alive and incredibly our best producing product. We bought these items at month 6 of pregnancy which was the beginning of winter. The Banana tree sat and I did nothing to it. The stalk that was on it withered away due to cold and I sent frantic emails to the nursery which were met with cool, "give it a chance once it warms up. And no refunds." The nursery man didn't understand what this tree symbolized in our brains! The banana received no water, no food, just sat in a 5 gallon black bucket. I was convinced it was dead.

Sadie was born. Rigamorale happened and she came home. She did okay and slowly got better. Miraculously, just as the nursery man proclaimed, once the weather heated up the banana started to sprout in the bucket. To our eager surprise we quickly dug a hole and stuck it into the ground. As Sadie has thrived, so has our banana tree. As it turns out bananas have rhizomes which are kind of like blobs underground. The blobs are the life of the plant and the stalk and *fingers crossed* fruit are the plants effort to reproduce. It was simply asleep for the cold winter months when we thought it to be dead.

We never had to worry about the wild animals, but we did find the growth of the banana tree, seemingly out of death, to be parallel to Sadie. We plan on continuing the mirrored growth by chronicling her growth with the Banana. This is our inaugural picture of Sadie and her Tree.





*For those who care (mainly me) we purchased an ice cream banana which produces the bananas that are often frozen and eaten as ice cream - only instead of ice cream it is really a frozen banana! The stalks get up to 12 feet tall which is a concern in that our winds blow west to east and it is unprotected from the west. During our monsoon storms winds can blow over a stalk ruining any chance of bananas for that stalk. The tree will be trussed shortly once it gets large enough.