Life Goes On!

Well, now that I’m back on the island I can report on things that are going on here before I put up a few more blogs regarding my trip to Europe.

In late May, before I returned to Honduras, the island experienced a 7.1 earthquake. We have “tremors” quite often. I have noted that from January to about March/April, we may have a little jarring once a month – nothing huge, just something that lets you know Mother Nature is still awake. From that point on, it’s anybody’s guess as to how frequently we will have these occurrences. I have always felt these were good things. In my mind, if small releases occur frequently, maybe it is like letting a safety valve release so that the build up is not there for the “big blast”. Anyway, nothing in our house suffered; i.e., nothing broke. A few small items fell to the floor, but that was all. My friend on the other side had a couple broken pottery items which she is gluing back together.

Then we had an incident on the Cay one Friday on shopping day. We have never felt threatened (at least during the day) on the Cay. We generally leave our groceries at one location, unwatched, where we all meet when we finish shopping to have a drink and talk. I have had a bag stolen from there, but it was from someone new in town who did not live here – the people on the island refer to them as “Spaniards”. We’ve had two bank robberies over a period of 6-7 years but that was about it. The bank was robbed twice by pretty much the same people (men from Savannah Bight) and a couple of them were caught and sent to prison (but not for very long!). We have had shootings and “incidents” with a machete, but these usually happen in the “Disco” late at night when the men are drunk. We do not go to the Disco late at night!

Anyway, at about 10:30 a.m. one of our group was walking along side the place where we gather when someone jumped her from behind pushing her into the wall. She fell and he tried taking her “fanny pack” from around her waist. She started to scream, 3 men came running and chased him finally catching him. She, in the meantime, got up and went and got the police who returned and arrested the man. He was from the coast (another “Spaniard”) and known to drink excessively. He was put in jail and finally shipped back to the coast.

The vegetable boats usually come on Friday but lately they’ve been coming on Thursday or whenever they get here! This has caused some stress for us shoppers – we never know when the boat will arrive and rather than sit on the Cay all day waiting for them to unload a boat, we would much prefer that we know exactly when it arrives. This means making a lot of phone calls to one another to see if anyone knows if the boat is in! Our social hour on shopping day has been impeded and I, for one, am not happy with this! Plus, I sent some boxes from the States before I left and, normally, they take about 3 weeks to reach us. Evidentially there is a problem with customs and our shipper is having to rework a deal with them to pass the shipments through. I now hope to get the boxes this week; 4 weeks from the time of shipment.

Also, the school teachers must be striking again because for the past 1 ½ weeks, the public school was not in session and children did not have classes. I heard it had something to do with the minimum wage being raised and some argument about the raise teachers should get, but I haven’t gotten all the facts so don't know if that is the problem. I don’t know if the public schools on the mainland were closed as what happens there does not always affect what goes on here.

Our weather has been unusual too. Normally, this time of year there is a strong wind out the East which keeps us fairly comfortable. We are in the dry season so that is not unusual and rain is pretty scarce. We did have some good rains before I returned in May but are in need of some more. This month the winds have ceased for a few days making it feel like August or September, which is when we generally experience the wind dying down. During those months one simply lays under a fan during the day reading so as to escape the heat. We have had several such days this month. This past weekend, when rain was predicted, we had high winds and threatening skies, but only received about 50 drops of rain.

With the lack of rain, my plants are suffering. However, on a walk of the back of the property, I found that the bamboo we planted last year is thriving, along with three palm trees and some other plants. On the downside, we lost about 4 palm trees on the beach due to lethal yellowing. In spite of our regiment of injecting the palms, we are still losing some to this disease and to palm beetles. Almost all the palm trees in the back of our property have died.

I spent some time this week expanding our pet cemetery. With the death of Cocoa in April our small plot needed to be enlarged. We have three dogs buried there; Cocoa, Pepper and Winken, one cat – Midnight and my lovely bird, Sienna. So, last week we went to a local area and gathered up some white granite to use to enlarge the boarder of the plot.

Next, my pineapples are starting to ripen and yesterday, after picking about a dozen, I decided that I would juice some and cut up the larger ones and freeze them. Our pineapples do not get very big and are just enough for two people. They are very, very sweet and I did not want them to go to waste. My worker has planted about 200 plants in back. Unfortunately, because of the location, the rats are eating up all the pineapples. Neither the dogs nor cats go back there so there is nothing to keep the rats at bay. We have a few bananas putting forth fruit, so we will have to watch those plants too.

Also, before I left, we installed new Pella windows on the second floor to replace some of the wooden louvered windows. Now, with all that glass, I have lots of sunshine streaming in and have to make curtains! I sent, via a shipper, some reflective film for the windows to keep it a little cooler upstairs. This will come with the 4 boxes sent to myself before I left! Also, we put in a new door which has a window so my husband is busy making a frame for a stained glass picture to hang in the door.

Otherwise, things are back to normal; my husband gets regular meals, the laundry gets done, the bird cages get cleaned out, the furniture gets dusted, etc., and I can blog once again!