It turns out that I’ve got a lot to learn about our mango trees. The two trees in our back yard were planted by my parents when my sister and I were born, and we grew up with them.

But this is the first year since we moved back to Kahala that they’ve produced more than a literal handful of mangoes. This year wasn’t a bumper crop, but it’s been quite a respectable one.

These are the mangoes I’m used to, at least from the larger tree, a Haden variety. When they’re getting ripe, it’s obvious. They turn these wonderful colors, yellow, orange, red. You learn to pick them just as these bright colors start developing, in order to beat the birds to the wonderful fruit.

But the latter part of this year’s mango crop is doing something different. This year, the tree flowered three different times. It would flower, then a storm with days of high winds would blow through, destroying a good percentage of the flowers. Then, a little later, a new round of flowers would appear. We have ended up with three waves of mangoes. The first already ripened and we picked the last of them a month or so ago. This first round all displayed those wonderful colors.

Now there’s another batch just starting to ripen, but they’re different. Some of the fruit are larger than normal, but aren’t developing those colors. They are green mixed with a rather dull purple wash of color, nothing bright at all. Some of them seem to get a shiny surface, making the purple color deeper, but still haven’t shown any red or orange. Then they seem to get a very slight background glow that, in the proper light, might be yellow. They don’t really appear to be ripening, but the birds seem to know otherwise even if I don’t recognize it.

There are also tiny mangoes ripening and falling. These don’t appear to be mature, and I’ve just trashed them. And I’ll have to wait and see whether the third round will ever ripen. There are fewer of them, and I’m just observering for now.

I’ve finally had to accept that the current round of mangoes won’t look like those from earlier in the season. It seems that I’m having to learn how to spot the ripe ones by trial and error.

Does anybody else recognize this change in the course of a long growing season? If so, please share in a comment.