I wanted to share my beautiful avocado tree that sprouted out of its seed a couple weeks ago.

I have been sprouting and planting fruit trees from seed. And this one stole the whole show because it sprouted and all my other ones didn't.

We have wanted to plant a tree to honor the birth of our 1 year old daughter and I think this is going to be it.

It's takes this avacado variety about 8-9 months from bloom to harvest representing a meaningful and symbolic gestation time to birth.

If there was two words I would choose for an avacado it would be sustenance and perseverance. Namely because of their extremely high nutritional value and good fats and you could survive on avacados alone for a long time. And we do wish for our daughter to always find the sustenance to live a healthy life and the perseverance to overcome.

How to sprout an avacado

Place the end of the seed that was nearest to where the avacado was attached to the tree in water. Find a way to keep that end in water. I used this baby jar bacause the rim fit perfectly around it to keep it upright.

I think it took several weeks for it to crack open and sprout.

The Caribbean has many variety of Avacados. Carribean Avacados tend to be a lot smoother and lighter skinned than the traditional Hass Avacado from California we are all so used seeing in grocery stores. They also have a higher water content and a lot lighter in flavor.

When life gives you limes, make limeade.

I got this lime tree along with a Sugar Apple tree , which didn't survive, from a Cruzan (local term for natives to this island) when we first came to the island 4 years ago.

It's really interesting how this stem grew in a twist at the bottom.

Because of the twist in the trunk the lime tree has become very significant and symbolic to me also. Its reflection of our journey when we did make the move to St. Croix- a little bit on the rough side and not too sure about things, totally stepping out of bounds and our comfort zone and what was normal for 2 midwesterners. A big change from the cold winters in Nebraska. It was really an upside down world for us but it quickly became our upright world. We became surefotted and found our stepping. That seems to be when the tree started to shoot strait again.

I love how the universe always gives us signs in our environment and shows us where we are in life. And choosing to not take those signs as mere coincidence just puts a whole new flavor on life. A flavor I call Limeade with a touch of Sugar Apple.

And Hail to the Sugar Apple tree that I'm going to sprout next. After all we do need sweet things in life and of course something to sweeten our limeade