While traveling in Brazil, my husband and I volunteered as gardeners in a pousada (the Brazilian equivalent of an inn), nestled on a hillside, above a jungle, in the state of Minas Gerais. Staircases meandered beneath avocado and banana trees, connecting buildings via verdant byways. One of our jobs while there was to collect ripe bananas with a basket on a long wooden pole.

This is a watercolor of our first harvest of sweet baby Brazilian bananas.