We all know the old saying about making lemonade with
“lemons” – here in Puna we take that a step further, using the invasive guava
trees to make “pink” lemonade. You will
sometimes see locals alongside the roads picking both pink and yellow guava –
from the top heavy branches. Only
problem is that everything here tends to grow to t-a-l-l so fast, you can’t
easily reach them.
Believe it or not, our dogs LOVE the guavas – but then
again, they also love carrots, bok choy and cabbage! We have several guava trees along the
driveway, so walking down to get the mail, it’s always a dash between me and
the three corgi dogs to see who can get to the newly fallen ripe ones first. I always let them have a few.
When we first moved in a couple years ago, I decided to try
an experiment with one of the too-tall-trees and cut it off 12 inches from the
ground to see what would happen. Lucky
me! It has grown into a guava “bush”
instead, only 5 feet tall with branches loaded with pink guava. Now that I know that works, I’ll do the same
with the rest of them.