Today, we went on a road trip to the other side of the Volcano to buy roses for planting. It is now raining hard, time to plant.
The 'other side' might as well be another world, people do things differently: Ladies proudly doing their shopping in cylindrical spongey curlers, gentlemen having their hair cut on front porches, men plowing with horses and some with old tractors. We followed a little corn truck going around delivering corn husks for Fathers Day in return for money, or in at least two cases I noticed for small red peppers or a sack of onions.
Almost at the end of the road, there is a very nice Señora and her daughter, who sell roses for $2 a plant; 200 yds down the road at the junction with the main road, the same plants $3; In Volcan, the town a few miles down the mountain, behind the municipal market. the same roses are now around $3.5; And by the time they have travelled to Boquete in the market they are $5. It has taken me sometime to work out the price dynamics of roses as well as the identity and location of the Source.
The Source wore a pink hat and was drying her laundry around the rose bushes in the morning sunshine. She has some very large mother plants, a great book about rose cultivation she was happy to share by a lady called Alvaraz and a garden full of healthy young rose plants.
We purchased 112 plants, were gifted 3 and given a discount on a large pot of a rarer purple blue rose. It took half a tank of gas and 6 hours with a stop for lunch. For a 60% discount, break-even point for me (I like a good lunch), is at around 20 plants. All assuming you enjoy visiting the 'other side', which I do.
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