Johnny "Papaya" and the Lovely Natividad

originally in Florida Gardening Magazine. October/November 2000


Getting out of my car in John Bums' driveway, I had to squeeze past a grapefruit tree, heavy with fruit. I can always tell when I'm approaching John's house, his being the only garden on the block that comes out to the road to meet me. John is also there to meet me, a friendly welcome, and we're off on a tour of a little wedge of rain forest cut out of...NO!...restored or retrieved from the middle of an otherwise ordinary Florida neighborhood.

You might be familiar with Johnny "Papaya" Bums, a contributor to Florida Gardening magazine and other periodicals, and a celebrated character in the Sarasota gardening scene. Originally from Alabama, John utilizes some colorful phrasing. At one point he tells me about a taste so good "your tongue will slap your brains out." Seriously into good nutrition and a healthy lifestyle, he says that sickness comes from malnutrition and mal- nutrition is a result of ignorance. John and Natividad have lived on this property for 23 years. A disabled WWII Navy veteran, John was a teacher of science and 6th grade. He has been in the Master Gardener program since 1989.

John and Naddie grow most of what they eat on this half-acre, wedge-shaped city lot. They boost the fertility of their part of the earth as well as the quality of their own health by growing with Fertrell, compost, and other organic additives. John is rightfully proud that they have no mower, no grass. He says he waits to be sued for nonsupport by his doctors.




We cut through the house before checking out the "papaya plantation" that wraps itself around the house: the beautiful to the pond, new bedroom John and Natividad recently added, the kitchen (2 or 3 juicing machines, bread maker, might as well be the rain forest. bowls of home-grown persimmons...), back to the enclosed pond, also a new addition. Fish glimmer by. John and Natividad raise everything for food, (eating the fish she doesn't name). These fish eat sweet potato leaves, bok choi, and just about anything else thrown to them. John tells me about his pair of foot-long Basilisk lizards, native to Costa Rica, that walk on their hind legs. This is not your typical ol' fishin' hole. During our tour, I keep finding my way to the pond, on the lookout for these miraculous critters.



Outside, we step into what might as well be the rain forest. There must be 100 papaya trees and dozens of varieties of banana trees in this rain forest. John sells the organically grown produce and soil amendments to neighbors, making his reputation over the years by word of mouth. Always concerned with the quality of the fruit he sells, John has "decorated" the papayas with rat traps baited with prunes to guard against those unsightly random bites.

There are winged beans and avocados. There is garlic growing in pots and shallots growing in a small plot, started from a grocery buy years ago. Bitter melon (Momordica charantia) twirls around a fence.


As I was getting into the car to leave, the grapefruit tree bid me farewell, letting loose a grapefruit -a little like the hurling apple trees in the Wizard of Oz, but more congenial, not so much telling me to be on my way, but to remember to eat what is here for the taking, unprocessed, ready to go. So I took the projectile home, ate it, and the bump on my head healed so much the faster.

Walking around this little bit of Eden, where most everything is grown in recognition that life can only be as good as the food we consume, I'm filled with reverence for the knowledge and concern of my fellow gardeners. There is so much to learn from you all, and I'm so much the better for knowing you. Thanks John and Naddie!