When we first moved into our home, this tree looked dead, with just a single trunk and a few branches with no leaves or buds or any outward sign of live. In the picture of the pool, the tree is in the upper left part of the photo. For most of the rainy season, the tree has produced leaves and filled out, but it was only a couple of weeks ago that an orange bloom appeared at the very top of the tree. I think that this might be some sort of sumac based on the leaves.
The flower its very interesting, too. It is large and is shaped like a scoop. It also has several flowers that bloom and then drop in sequence. I am not sure how long the blooms last, but the tree seems to be perpetually in flower once it gets going.
Another aspect of the rainy season is the amounts of rain we receive. In the picture above, the water in the swimming pool has reached the rim representing about 8 inches of rain that came during about five days of brief but very heavy showers. One of these showers produced some local flooding and power outages. So far this year we've had about three or four outages in our home per month. Only one has lasted more than an hour, and we were without power for about 6 hours. It may have been caused by an vehicle accident that involved a pole and that occurred during a heavy rainstorm.
Here are few more pictures from the trees next door. When I first saw this type of tree, I thought that there was a flock of birds roosting in it. On closer look, the white flecks are some sort of flower or seed pod. It really is beautiful here now.
Sometime in the next month, the daily rainstorms will stop, and the world will dry up and become brown and red. The birds here even have plumage that blend in with the red soil. The bird in this photo are a very common bird here that spends a lot of time on the ground searching for bugs to eat. They also hang out at the embassy near the cafeteria at lunch time and takes uneaten bits of meat off of abandoned plates.
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