Putting a Banana to Bed (for the winter)

The incredulity has worn off by now--that we have bananas in North Vancouver I mean. I remember when the One Guy with banana trees was legendary, and people would go on mystical quests to find his garden.

Of course, no one ever actually gets fruit, but the plant itself is a wonder for us northerly folk. Now that I have extensive meditative experience in tropical banana groves, I'd say the plants here are overall more attractive; the climate is neither dusty nor blast-furnace-like, so banana leaves tend to unfurl in their other-worldly way, and remain fresh and untattered. Tropical banana groves can look a bit ship-wrecked.

Here's Jim n' Wren's banana grove, on the cusp of December. Case in point. And contrary to the Overwintering Banana Advisory, I'm afraid I don't treat it with kid gloves at this time of year...

I call these the Banana Manglers.

(*Take note of the warm-hands tactics: long fluorescent rubber workgloves with--also fluorescent--warm fuzzy cotton liners, purchased at Mark's Work Wearhouse. Reduces your digital dexterity, but at this time of year, "mangling" is an acceptable activity.)

I wanted to show a cross-section of a banana stem because it is essentially a pillar of water: very easy to slip a saw through but very heavy to carry!

(It doesn't taste like banana. Not that I tried it. It doesn't smell like banana.)

We started this rather reductionist approach one year when the grove was getting ridiculously big, and we were actually trying to "discourage" it. Prior to that, I would undertake the installation of a complex insulation system involving straw and black plastic and wads of string around standing stalks so that a large vaguely humanoid garbage-like structure would appear to be lurching through the bare winter garden. Unnecessary. A banana grove will spring back full-size from the ground.

(No monkey habitat left. Save the monkeys.)

Even if the big stumps freeze and turn into a gloopy mess, the roots will send up a whole new crop of shoots (like the few still standing) and the grove will resurrect itself--even after last winter's endless snow and freezing temperatures (I don't think it went below -15C). Of course, the chopped banana leaves are saved for a teepee mulch, see below.


So sweet dreams Musa Basjoo.

O--another haiku opportunity:

Daay-Oh. Day oh-oh.

Winter come and me wanna

Go to Hawaii.