the heart of a palm

after the strong winds and waves over the past couple of days, one of the palm trees looked a bit like it was about to crash onto the little gazebo on the beach where i am sitting, so i was happy that the owners also realized this and decided to cut it down before anyone or anything was hurt...and it was quite the event, with the gardener and his assistant and al the men from security and the kitchen watching and cheering them on as they climbed up the bamboo ladder and hacked away with their machete knife, and in the end succeeded in pulling down the top third. and i thought that that was the end of that...but no...they were so busy, hacking away at it and giving everybody a taste of the inside of the top of the trunk ( the young soft "wood" which tasted a little like coconut but more the consistency of bamboo shoots in chinese food...and then they continued hacking away, enthusiastically, and i couldn't figure out why, and suddenly we started to see something pink inside,,,,the heart of the palm tree, i laughed and said that now comes the strawberry/vanilla ice cream in the middle since that is what it looked like...and they gave us all a little taste, the size of a walnut, and the vanilla part was like delicate new leaves that embraced the heart....the amazing part is that they know all of this, and recycle everything!! the long young leaves go for making ceremonial baskets, the other leaves can be made into a carrying bag....and the young coconuts were chopped open with one exact hack of the knife, and then the little bit of skin that skill covered the water from pouring out was expertly removed with the tip of the machete...an art!