Tropicals & Tender Perennials: Tropical Garden #65, 1 by tropicbreeze

tropicbreeze wrote:
When my dam was dug out, long before I bought the place, they brought some limestone up to the surface. That's what I've been using. Plus got some larger slabs from a limestone hill out from where I work.

And about the dam, got home and have checked it out 3 times already. No sign of anything. Suspect the croc never even got into the dam. Checked around the swamp but that's a bit dodgy. Sort of like getting into the dam to check it out. :O(

While looking around in the garden I noticed that the Philo high up in the Coconut palm looked "cooked". There were Coconut fronds lying scattered all around. My two Pawpaws (what you call Papaya) looked "cooked", withered and collapsed. On one side some tall Acalypha was scorched, together with some Ginger leaves. And one Coconut palm had fibre sticking out of the trunk as though it has exploded internally and pushed its stuffing out. A short (young) Coconut had its heart and most of the fronds bent over to breaking point as though a huge weight had fallen on it.

Only two options come to mind.

One, that an alien spaceship tried to land there breaking plants and the exhaust burning some of them.

Two, some form of ball lightning exploded between the Coconuts creating heat and a shock wave which caused the damage.

And funnily enough, so far the alien theory seems the most plausible. I've tried to "reconstruct" the lightning theory but it leaves too many questions unanswered. I really don't know ... if it's not torrential rains it's marauding crocodiles or wayward spaceships! It's endless, the things a gardener has to put up with!

This is a "before" photo of the Philo, about 5 to 6 metres (16.4 to 19.7 feet) up the Coconut. Can't get an "after" photo until tomorrow (daylight).