One of the pillars of this website and blog, aside from nicotine is coffee. As all my family and friends know I?m a lover of coffee. I drink it in the morning and during the day. Strong and sweet. No cream. One of my favorites is a real Italian Espresso, but that?s hard to get in the Philippines. Only in large hotels and some coffee shops in larger malls sometimes you can buy a good espresso.
From Holland I brought my Senseo coffee pad machine with a large supply of pads. My preferred pads are ?dark roast?. Unfortunately I haven?t found the necessary pads in the Philippines yet. Hopefully one day they will be imported here as well. Until then I?m depending on my family and relatives to send me some from time to time.
Click on one of the images to see the latger ones in a slide show
When we first rented the house where we are living in, we?ve seen several neglected plants and bushes in our garden. One of them was a 3 meters high coffee plant. Lots of ants found a nice house in this plant so it didn?t grow very well.
We?ve been spraying with insecticide to try to have the plant grow better. The plant was forming new leaves now and after some time we could see that the plant was forming white flowers too. That was a good sign. 
A few days ago after sun rise, we were noticing a very strong sweet smell around the house. Inspection learned that our coffee bush has opened all her beautiful large white flowers and was producing this lovely smell.
The whole neighbourhood has this nice smell. But is was not only us or our neighbours who smelled the flowers, also a kind of small wasps have found the sweet smelling flowers. There were hundreds of them. Each insect about 8 to 10 mm long. According to my wife, and she?s a Filipina as you know, these insects are easy annoyed and nasty and will stitch easily. No problem, some people would say, but according to my wife it would be very itchy and painful. So to prevent being stitched I kept a secure distance. Yet I was able to take some pictures of the wasps doing their best to gather as much honey as they could get.
And of course in the mean time they were fertilizing the flowers so later we will have coffee beans (I hope?). A few hours later the strong sweet smell was gone already.
Still a long way to go but who knows I can drink my own coffee one day.
Two days later the flowers were dried and brown. Now it?s waiting for the berries. Then drying, peeling and roasting the beans, grinding them and try to make a tasteful cup of coffee. I?ll buy some extra cigarettes already?.
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Earlier comment:
Raquel Gacos Cainag
raqgacos@hotmail.com
Submitted on 2009/02/17 at 4:54pm
Hi Jan and Deling,
Your care for the environment leads you to a place where appreciation of eco-system is less of importance. Blessed with green thumbs, you and Deling can make a difference in the neighborhood and hopefully they will be inspired to love nature gifts abundance in your place.
Hopefully we will be home this summer, we look forward seeing your garden comes alive with fruits and flowers.
Cheers,
Raquel&family
Doha Qatar
Filipino time:
yes Jan
Me, I have coffee trees too.
we harvest the beans, and roast them in a large pot;
the result: the taste no good. parat means bitter.
the smell is very nice: humot = sweet.
good luck
Rienus
our tree didn’t have fruits at all, so I still have to buy my coffee.
love reading your blog about coffee tree,,..we also have coffee trees back in my province about 800 trees and we’re Praying for a good harvest for you to have a good cup of coffee,,…lolzzzzz,,.
Hi Joan,
Are you from the coffee region in Batangas/Cavite ?
,,my Province is in Agusan del Sur,my province is more known in Palm Oil Plantation…