The banana tree is sitting on a plant shelf in the pond.  The pot it is in is 36 inches across!

Rich is 6' tall and you can see in early summer how tall the banana tree is!

  This photo was taken from the back side of the lower pond

Rich is 6' tall so you can see the banana tree is very tall.

The flower continued to grow and produce flowers and then baby bananas.

Until..........

We got the winds from hurricane Ivan.  The winds blew the tree over in the pond and broke the bananas right off the tree.

It took 4 of us to get the tree out of the pond.  We carried it back to the compost pile like a telephone pole because it was so heavy.  The high winds had actually bent the thick stalk.

After that episode, Rich said no more banana trees IN the pond.

Not sure what we will do with the banana tree.  It spent the summer sitting outside the greenhouse.  Now it is approximately 15 to 16' tall and the greenhouse is only 12' tall in the center. 

Rich noticed the flower about a week ago and now we can see 4 bunches of bananas and it looks like there will be more as more of the flower opens up.  I have no idea what kind of banana tree it is because it was not marked when I bought it.

We are both anxious to pick our own bananas but I am also worried because we are about 6 to 8 weeks away from our first frost and there is no way we will be able to get it back in the greenhouse. 

Part of the photo is an illusion.  I am standing under the plant looking up to take the photo.  The light pole and wires in the background makes the banana tree look taller than the 15 to 16' that it actually is.  (This is actually a security light at the back of our property where the greenhouse is located)

You can see how much taller the tree is than the greenhouse which is 12' tall.

The flower is about 12 inches long and it looks like as the flower opens, there will be more bunches of bananas.  When we first saw the flower there was only 1 bunch of bananas

October 13th update.  We are supposed to get a frost tonight about 2 to 3 weeks ahead of schedule so we cut the bananas off the tree

In the fall of 2006 the night before our first heavy frost, we removed the bananas from the tree.  We will try to ripen them in the house

Update - the bananas were too immature to ripen