Toucarie - staying in and going out

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Somehow this blog from May was never published. So take yourself back to spring and here are our final thoughts before returning from Dominica...

There has been lots of rain so our snorkelling trips were delayed due to murky water but we still got out there as much as we could. The Reef Fish book comes out after each trip to check on new fish we have seen. Life at the house is still wonderful, and as trees come into bloom we watch the small colourful birds – including lots of humming birds - darting around. The local Zandoli tree-lizards continue to be a favourite to watch and Andy spends his evenings gazing at the ceiling and our unpaid cleaning staff – the house geckos hunting insects.

Son continues to help us with our ever expanding garden. We call it our work in progress but we already have great results. The fruit and flowers we have are wonderful but there are plenty more recently planted that we won't see the results until a year or 2 or 3 in the future. It continues to amaze us that you can just cut the top off a plant, jam it in a hole in the ground and it grows. This is how we now have hibiscus hedges all around our boundary – it's like magic.

We had a girls night on the deck with friends from Ross University, Portsmouth and Calibishie. Andy was confined to the kitchen to produce cocktails and a couple of curries but Kate did her bit with a farewell cake for Almira and Andy's birthday cake. In our last week there was then a farewell party for us combined with birthdays for Stacey and David. We took our first pineapple as a gift for the hosts but it ended up being used for the Alexander technique!

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