Missing Willow Farm

This morning we harvested surely what must be the last of the asparagus, our first salsa peppers, a LOT of potatoes, some garlic, a sampler carrot and spring onion and some spinach and beet greens. I am thinking frittata.

To the family, not the farm.  🙂  Our daughter Tracy and her husband Brad just welcomed a daughter to their family.  Dominic is the proudest big brother.  Her name is Maxine and she’s precious!

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Our garden is completely planted for this year.   We’re approaching our last possible frost date with temperatures in the 80s in the forecast.  The only thing missing is zucchini and we will squeeze it in somewhere if we find some starter plants.

Every bed is planted.

The garlic should have scapes soon.

Future cabbage.

Jerusalem artichoke rhizomes. We’ve wanted these for a while but never think about them until the growing season is over. All of our normal seed suppliers were completely out. I found these on Etsy.

Hot peppers started from seed indoors.

Can’t wait for these to flower so we can enjoy some new potatoes.

Poblanos and jalepenos are already starting to flower.

The fox family that lives in our annex pasture has expanded.  They totally ignore our sheep when they’re over there.  The den is near our front gate.  We’ve seen five of them so far.

This is a miniature scene from the original Ghostbusters movie set inside an Altoids tin.  Venkman grabbing Slimer with his proton stream.  The ballroom in the background is the one used in the movie.  The chandelier is made from a piece of vintage jewelry.

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Brian and I have been complaining about the geese that  discovered our pond about a week ago.  I was tickled to glance out our front windows to see he had taken this problem into his own hands and was out chasing them off in our rowboat.  They actually just flew from one end to the other for a bit until they got sick of being pursued.  Good job, honey!

We fell in love with snorkeling in Jost Van Dyke BVI .

Coconuts were everywhere. We tried pina coladas served in coconut shells.

We visited a chocolate factory and learned how they turn cocoa beans into candy bars.

We visited a banana plantation.

Here’s our ship, the Seabourn Quest. It has just 450 passengers.

A typical, beautiful sunset.

Unlimited caviar onboard.

We attended a bordeaux tasting.

Some local Caribbean inhabitants.

I finally finished sorting through all our photos and have caught up on laundry.   Back to tagging sheep and rebuilding raised beds.  Sigh.

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That’s us.  We even have certificates to prove it.  We went on a submarine in Barbados.  We had done a semi-sub tour last year in Grand Cayman and were looking forward to actually submerging.  The onboard experience between the two is very similar and both visited shipwrecks.  Unfortunately, the deeper you go, the harder it is to photograph as it’s much darker.  My biggest thrill was seeing a sea turtle which you can hopefully make out in the last photo.

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We spent a day on Devil’s Island after reaching the Atlantic Ocean.  We booked a zodiac boat island tour to the main island where the prisoners were kept until the facility closed in 1953.  Our ship had the movie Papillon available on demand in the cabins so we watched it early in our cruise to catch up on the history and brutality of the penal colony.  Our tour was a go, then put on hold because of a missile launch from the island was rescheduled to the day we arrived.  Then the missile was rescheduled again but there was a port worker strike.  The strike was solved then 10 minutes before we left for the tour we were notified of an unplanned military exercise on the island.  So… they gave us the day on the adjacent island that housed the prison’s guard staff, hospital and solitary confinement.

The view of the island on approach by our ship’s tender. Very mysterious looking.

Such a lush tropical place!

Entrance to one of the cells. We had open access to most of the buildings. There was even a small hotel and restaurant on the island. We couldn’t figure out why anyone would want to stay, though. You can walk around the entire island in about 90 minutes.

The ruins of two solitary cells.

Scary things can become beautiful with time.

The grounds had beautiful flowering trees and bushes.

This is a missile monitoring tower that supports the French spaceport on the island next door.

This little guy is an agouti. They’re everywhere. They have cute orange rumps and feed off of coconuts and nuts on the island. They’re like a very large guinea pig with long legs and are used to people admiring them.

The island had a healthy colony (a muster, actually) of peafowl. The hens were ignoring the males completely, despite their best efforts.

Hello gorgeous!

Another photo. Just because.

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