Extreme Gardening and other adventures

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We have comfortably settled into island life and love it. After initially missing all the family and the first couple of weeks of problems and repairs, we have been able to enjoy our surroundings and catch up with friends. So the problems of those first couple of weeks… well the car needed new brake pads and lights to pass its annual inspection… the dishwasher was broken so fixed that… the brakes failed on the car (rear cylinder seal) – on a rather steep winding road, scary… we replaced the broken hinges on our bedroom door… also replaced a broken door handle… the brakes failed on the car again (cylinder seal again)… we got the house phone re-connected… and the brakes failed on the car again (cylinder replacement this time). The car is working fine now but after spending last year without reverse, we were not looking forward to the great adventure of permanently having no brakes!

Since then there has been gardening. Lots of gardening. It’s wonderfully satisfying and the last 3 years of work is now really paying off. Initially the excitement was for the final end-of-season fruit that we just caught on our arrival, a single tangerine, 4 star fruit (kiambola) and 5 limes – and the on-going supply of ginger and bananas. Then we took on a quarter of an acre of bindweed and we now appear to be winning. Recently we are tidying (it takes a week just to rake up the leaves), planting more trees (Valencia orange, cherry, almond, coffee and breadfruit so far) and growing from seed (white grapefruit, pink grapefruit, lemon and avocado).

And between all of this we have managed some lovely walks, beach barbeques, visits from friends, drives across the island, river tubing and carnival. We have also been planning a few projects, but more on that next time.

There are more photos below, or just click on the first one and scroll through...

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Photos

purple throated carib on the heliconia in the garden
his green wings and blue back are clear, but when the light catches his purple throat, that shows brightly too

grapefruit
from the market not the garden - but give us time...

extreme gardening
this is all from trimming just one bougainvillea

Comments

[Bridie]

Absolutely Fabulous
It looks beautiful. Wish you were here and me there!