Friday, June 27, 2008

Garden Wonders




I love gardening. I hope to someday have a real, huge, out of control, too much produce for my family to eat, kind of garden. Until that fine day, I make do with growing what I can in containers. The strawberries amaze me at how they are so desperate to spread. My plants have rooted themselves in the gravel and managed to produce some fruit! Edwin, a really poor boy from the school who machete's our grass for us, has asked me if he can have the strawberries when we leave :) They're quite expensive to buy in the market so that makes me happy knowing he will get to enjoy them when we're gone.

In the front of our house we have a small flowerbed where I planted some sweetpeas. I adore sweetpeas, their aroma is like nothing else. They are growing nicely but I am afraid they may not bloom before we leave! I sure hope they do. In amongst the sweetpeas a vine started to grow that I did not plant. I asked the guys who work at a greenhouse next to us if they knew what it was and they said it was "sandia" (watermelon). These same greenhouse workers like to lounge on the edge of my flowerbeds eating their snacks which have included: Surprise! Watermelon. So they must have spit out some seeds into the dirt and voila - my very own melon patch, sort of. There are a lot of little yellow blossoms on the vines so I've asked my neighbor Ruth to send me a photo if they ever grow some little melons. We don't live in the hot part of Gutemala where melons are grown, but it would be neat to see if some did grow.

Papa's Day Fun





We finally got Zaak to Chamche, our local "tourist centre" here in Tactic - he'd been holding out but how could he resist a Father's Day picnic with his adoring wife and children? We saw some neat animals there, I especially liked the baby marguay (looks like a jaguar) and the baby armadillos! I am such a sucker for baby animals! Maybe it's a female thing, I don't know. Because generally I'm not a big pet person at all.

Blaise also braved the frigid waters of the swimming pools, and we had our lunch with only a few stray mongrels staring us down. All in all, the outing was a success.

Tuesday, June 03, 2008

Kids abd Stuff



It's been a rainy couple of days thanks to Hurricane Alma which was supposedly hitting Nicaragua this past week. Our internet connection has been terrible so we haven't been able to read the news, blog, email or go on FB much at all. I think I talk about the internet like Canadians talk about the weather, maybe it's a missionary thing :) (I have to post this at the city nearby where we do our shopping - at an internet cafe. Grrr.)

The kids have both been sick, Blaise with his recurring croup and Acadia now with a cough too. Poor little lambs. Acadia has taken off walking now, and can toddle the length of each room in our house. Blaise is potty-training (this time for real) we hope!?! He will be 3 in just a month and a half so it is HIGH time!

Still no word yet on where we'll be this fall, but I am getting excited for the trip to Canada nonetheless. Zaak's sister Saison is due to have her baby about a week after we arrive and his other sister Salome about a month later, then there are some weddings to go to, and just catching up with family and friends will be so wonderful. I'm banking on putting on a little weight with all the visiting we'll be doing :)

Hope you find me next time with better internet and news about our pending move!