It’s Saturday. In my opinion, if it counts for anything at all, is that people in their right minds do not wake up before 7am on a Saturday morning, let alone make themselves vertical. Chris and I must not be people in their right minds. I think the clock said 6:17 when I looked at it wondering how on earth I managed to marry a man that can be awake enough to feel the need to share his over alert chatter with his loving wife at that hour of the day. I used to be able to climb out of bed as soon as the alarm went off, but then I moved about 25 minutes closer to my job and discovered the bliss of three snooze button hits before actually getting up. That and that I had hair that didn’t always need to be combed in the morning to look decent and in most cases actually earned me several “Your hair looks so good today!” type comments. Now my commute to work is about 20 feet total. You can imagine what that does to the wake up routine.
After a much needed cup of coffee on the deck, and giving in to Chris’ harassment to go watch the most recent episode of LOST I decided that today would be a good day to tackle my raised bed garden project. It was early and it was cool, and I had a husband with a lot of energy. After a few eyelash bats I convinced him that helping me move the unusable filters into place would be a great idea. We got out there, figured out dimensions, then he started moving filters and I started placing them. His enthusiasm lasted about 30 minutes. Mine lasted about 2 hours and resulted in a small garden with sweet corn, lettuce, carrots, beets, spinach, yellow zucchini, and two different kinds of peas.
The actual bed itself is about 4’x6′ I think. This is all very experimental. If anything comes up I’ll be very happy, not just because we’ll have fresh vegetables, but because it’ll also give our staff a chance to see that you can grow stuff in your own yard rather than having to always buy it at market. It’s a very foreign concept here. The only people that can grow things are gardeners or farmers, and they only grow things in big fields.
Kelele and Luxon, two of our workers, have been here for the last three Saturday’s to build a wall around one of the trees on the beach. People have been hacking at the roots of it and the tree is probably about 100 years old, so we’re building a wall around it to protect it. Because they already had mortar mix done I decided to tackle another project I’ve been wanting to do. I made a new flower bed by our back door a while ago, and just edged it with rocks knowing that I would need to beef that up a bit before the rainy season really gets started or everything will wash away. I pulled up all of the rocks today and cemented them in place so there’s a bit of a barrier there. Once everything is dry I’ll add some more dirt.
We used to have a tap sticking up out of the ground in this area and moved it about a month ago. There was gravel around it to cut down on the mud that would get tracked in the house, so I raked all of that back to the driveway area and spread it out a bit, then took bigger rocks and made a bit of an edge so it wouldn’t keep seeping back into the yard. I also dumped one wheelbarrow full of dirt and divided a sod chunk to encourage the grass to grow there.
In hindsight it doesn’t sound like a lot of work, but it was about 6 hours worth and I’m feeling a bit spent so I guess that counts for something. I went to go put my tools away and checked out Chris’ sprinkling system in the garden and saw a bunch of birds enjoying some communal bath time. Mom & Dad, you’ll be happy to know that Jabez is a lot like George and loves to be out in the garden. Except instead of just sitting the sun or wandering around smelling flowers Jabez chases butterflies and goes into hot pursuit after lizards. There’s also much rooting in the dirt after bugs. Needless to say she’s had a very busy day, especially since Chris transplanted some papayas while I worked by the house.
Rollings in Haiti 
So did you still go for a swim? You totally should have!
I didn’t but some of the ‘young people’ (wow that makes me sound old) did, lightning and all! It was kind of chilly that day so I was more than happy to sit around in jeans and be warm in a non-sweaty sort of way :)