Snippets ...

Big news is that we'll soon have human neighbors - a lovely Canadian couple is building this home about 100 meters up the road from us.
Below is Yoli & her 'new' baby ... I think the little guy must be getting close to 6 months old, since Yoli and Victor are bringing him out ... he still doesn't have a name. Now, I'm no expert on Ngobe-Bugle culture, but from what I can piece together, due to the high infant mortality rate, until any baby reaches about 6 months of age, it's just referred to as 'a baby' ... found this very confusing when Yoli and Victor had Myrna and I kept being told 'it's too early for a name' ... now, I accept that it'll be a while before I learn what this little fella's name is.

It's now the 'heart of rainy season' and the tarantulas are engaged in romance - Paul discovered this little guy in his garage, and quickly chased him into an empty coffee mug using a coverplate for an electric wall switch as a 'shield'...

Paul let the little guy go out on our rock wall - assured him that there would be lots more lady spiders (they're easy to identify since they're about twice as big) in the wall than he'd find in a garage ... the little fella tried to fight Paul on that one (that's the switchplate in Paul's hand) ...


& we all know how Jeanne loves flowers and is particularly interested in the sculptural aspects of banana blooms - well, this is another type of banana flower - according to locals, the fruits of this smaller variety of banana are small and red skinned ... they may have a medical aspect, too:

This n that

This is the path that runs behind the house and the drainage channel (just to the left of the gravel walkway) we built to deal with the rainfall we get this time of year.
We're just starting these steps, which will eventually lead up to a seat overlooking the river.


This section of path is on the back side of the house:
AND the following photos are some of what one sees when they walk through the garden:

Catching up....

We know we've been neglecting this blog for too long. Sorry about that.

Rainy season, which started in April, has brought a few floods - In general, I don't mind them, and consider them far less destructive than what we were used to in SC. That said, we do live on the side of a mountain - a very rocky mountain - and when the water gets going, some of the rocks in the stream move ... a couple days/nights have sounded like we live next to a bowling alley .... that said, I was not pleased to discover that a couple VW sized rocks had headed down stream... fortunately, they were replaced by interesting new rocks:

While we haven't been inconvenienced by this relocation, others have because they need to get to their properties by crossing the bridge ...

So you see how half the flow is plugged with rocks? And, let me assure you that those tubes are MUCH smaller in diameter than the rocks that got washed away... Don't know who was brilliant enough to design that sort of bridge for our type of river. The old bridge was much more sensible:
Yes, it's falling to bits due to old age, but the interesting thing is that when the flood was at it's worst & going over the new bridge, the old one was out of the flow & despite its ffy looks, is still strong enough to hold a full dump truck.