Papa and the Banana Tree

I had no idea until this week, that my FIL has a banana tree in his backyard in this little bitty area behind his garage. Apparantly, he's had it for awhile but this is the first year it has actually had bananas. There was alot of excitement over the bananas.

Of course, they are still very small, and chances are the birds will eat them. But at least we got pics.

My son took the pics - and he's getting pretty good with the camera. The big brown looking pod thing hanging down holds the bananas and at some point, they sort of bust out. The small green pea pod looking things above it, are bananas, I'm told. They have already busted out of the brown pod thing.

And here is Papa with his tree. I think DS was alittle too close to him when he took the pic. It would have cropped better if he had been standing back some.

Interesting though huh? If anyone has experience with banana trees and knows what they're looking at, please feel free to correct my limited banana knowledge in the comments. :)