Gardening in the Jungle - Feb 2014

It's mid afternoon. Sweat beads under colorful headwear as machetes clear another clump of overgrowth, and spiked stalks are uprooted with dirt covered gloves. Music plays from portable speakers blaring through the garden fence, a chickenwire affair turned brown and green with old pea plant vines, new pumpkin flowers and weeds. A heavy shovel thumps away as mud slicks are shaped into earthen stairs, and slowly we reclaim J-'s garden from the encroaching jungle.

The Guppy House doesn't so much back up the rainforest as T- V- is a small cluster of houses carved out of the rainforest which surrounds us. J-, who was a manager here for two years, put a garden in some time ago. In the months since his departure, the jungle made strong progress in reassimilating  the patch of horticultural domestication. After consecutive days of labor, the paths have been redefined, several banana trees have emerged, an apple sapling has been discovered, okra stems and plenty of dasheen stalks have been found. Places have been cleared to replant the green peas, more ocra, and whatever else our local experts think might grow.

This week the Guppy House, our quiet home on the hill in T- V-, has been hopping with activity. The Upper House, so called for being set twenty yards or so uphill, for months stood vacant, waiting for its revolving door of researchers to roll through. Dr. R-'s project, with its continuous data collection, has guppy interns (Guppsters) constantly keeping the Guppy House lights on. But this week, the upper house too is alive and crawling with PIs, grad students, professors and PhDs, all here looking at the fish, stream ecology, historic evolutionary ecology experiments in action, all the Trinidadian riparian system has to offer. Mostly, work and life here revolve around the Trinidadian guppy.

We've acquired some new friends in the mix - three students from the U- of V- will be staying on for three months, doing a series of stream ecology experiments, some in our backyard, some in our focal sites, some in other systems. We've already had the chance to assist them with a variety of projects. It's interesting to see other projects in action, comparing notes, looking at experiment design, swapping equipment recommendations and recipes. I'm hopeful that we are going to change to a different model of fish weighing scales, field tested here last week, and have acquired a top secret jerk chicken recipe field tested at our barbecue. Since we six Guppsters are on break between recaps, we have been free to dive headfirst into assisting with the visiting projects, seeing different field sites, talking science as we bounce around the terrible Trini roads in our beat up plucky muddy trucks, lending a hand with the fishing and sampling (at which we are now experts), showing the ropes of our lab and being shown new techniques. At the end of the day, any number of us can be found on mismatched furniture idly swatting at mosquitoes, sharing conversation, laundry soap, and stories.

"Oh, hey! Check out what I found!"

We are back in the garden, crowding around a huge muddy tuber A- has just turned up with a machete.

"What's that?"

"A Tania root. Blue food. It's sort of like a potato."

The Guppy house volunteered to cook everyone dinner, and we are excited to include the first product of Garden 2.0 in the meal we are feeding the visiting PIs.

Stay tuned for Part Two: in which we do not poison the PIs, though it's an uncomfortably near thing.