28 January 2016

Austin found this jumping spider, cavorting on his hand, and scaring our guest.

The little critter really kept on the move and it was hard to get an in-focus photo. (I put the spider first because the only thing is not so happy.)

BARF LEAF – or RUNS LEAF … I don’t know what.  But a tummy flu arrived along with  41 guests – almost half of whom were affected.  And me.  THIS is the leaf our local friends showed up with.  Those who chewed it said it helped.   I didn’t chew it – I just took to bed.   All better now!

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21 January 2016

I love this photo I forgot I took of two students (Hannah and Brooke) on their laptops up by Junia’s house.   The vaivai tree has been greatly pruned as you can see from the neatly stacked logs; this all being to keep the little vaivai leaves out of the pool.   The sky is blue again.

Whereas this photo – I know you have no idea why I took it.

The close up probably does not help much.   There was a marvelous cloud of moths under the mango tree.  Kiki was on the swing.  Every time Akka swung Kiki the cloud would go on the move, sparkling in the sunlight like a Hollywood special effect.   Alas I could not capture it.

You might remember my friend Patti from the  sari modelling during wedding season.  Her husband, a very generous gent originally from Mauritius, came to visit and was thrilled it is mango season.  Apparently Mauritius has wonderful mangoes and so he had to stop at every mango vendor to be sure to get all the varieties, and made this mango basket for Monica.  To be sure, there were sizes, shapes and colors of mangoes I never suspected were here.

A memory further back – this was our sun-drying of tomatoes from August 2014, eighteen or so months ago.

With the arrival of the keen Aussie students who are studying agriculture, marketing and the like, Austin worked with them to kick it up a notch.   Behold the NEW solar fruit dryer!

Nifty!

Other students are making jams, others trying out coconut oil and related products.

If I gave any impression last week that I was overwhelmed with them all here, that was incorrect.  They are a great group of sweet and thoughtful, enterprising and totally lovely youth.

I will miss them all (including Anthia, not in the photo) and also the organizers off camera.   Bye-bye  Emma, Kevin, Estelle, Oscar, Delaney,  Rose, Lily, Sophie,  Isabelle, Daniel, Hannah, Brooke, Emma, Wendy, Robbie, Julie, Lucy, Kai, Corinna, Angeline, Vivian, Kathy, and Polina!

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“14 January 2016”

Excuses,, excises = this week’s blog is 24 hours late because of lack of internet.  Twenty-four students, 72 hours, 16 Gigabytes of wifi  for the month: Gone.  Plashnet top up – send reaquest, wait, make phone call, wait,  make second phone call, get angry …. Good Lord.     At least the pool here is functioning properly – pump, filter, waterfall, the whole shebang.

As promised:  the pups.  To me they just look like plump lumps.  I am refusing to get excited or attached.

The only real fauna news around here I notice is that we have more chicks than ever.  These are week old chicks.  Normally they’d be gone.

These are day old chicks.

The incubator still had many dozen eggs.  Some are hatching even now (when I took the photo yesterday morning).   It is never ending.

There are cages of 2 week old and 3 week old chicks in the yard.  I asked Austin what the heck happened.  He says people are broke after Christams, and also it was rainy (nobody wants to try to raise baby chicks in rainy weather), and also he has probably saturated the local market.

When looking at the photos, Austin pointed out to me the Lonely Gosling.   Geese are extremely social birds, and this orphan was rejected by his genetic kin and so he is doing his best to stay close to the chicks he grew with.   Poor young goose.

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I’ll try to get something happier next week.

Yours in haste<  Kim

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7 January 2016

See the egg crates in the wall.  Rakesh’s great idea for soundproofing for inside the wall between the room he is upgrading and the one that my son Guy upgraded out of the same porch 5 years ago.

We are in SUCH a hurry.  I knew we had a group coming on January 24th, but since last week another group confirmed for January 11th.

We are SOOOO busy I thought today was Wednesday (that was yesterday)…. and I am getting my blog out on the right day, barely, 14 hours past my normal schedule.

There were only 2 photos in my camera this week: this is the second one.  We actually stopped the car to get this photo – Beqa Island, raining in the middle and dry on the ends.

More is going on.  Po had another litter of puppies, six  of them living, 3 girls and 3 boys.   Fruit bats are flying overhead.  And nobody has done the New Year’s custom of throwing water on each other, because God has been throwing water down on all of us nearly non-stop.

MORE NEXT WEEK  –

Lots of love.