Mon, 28 Jan

Huge Banana Trees and a Birthday Dinner


this morning we walked down the road about 20min to another location where we have a larger garden.    all along the road were wonderful black raspberries.   and .... impatients of all things !  

then we turned off the road, and it was cool walking through the forest back to the garden.    there are HUGE banana trees there!   

the soil is really nice, so much better than the clay we have back at the Hacienda.    we spent the morning using our machetes to clear the unwanted plants from the ground under the Banana and Yucca trees.    this is what it looked like before we started ...

we also learned that these 'elephant-ear-looking' plants are what they are feeding the giant tortoises at the Breeding Center ...

our 'boss man' and leader, Geovanny (and Tigger) on our break ...
i applaud Geovanny for organizing work for now 22 people ... each day we do something different so we don't get bored; ... he keeps it 'fresh' ... 

we were also clearing the ground to plant more vegetable seeds.     this is 'Spring' in the Galapagos, and time to start planting ...

on the way back, i was way way behind the group becasue i kept stopping to pick raspberries   :)       ...and take photos ...

before getting to the Hacienda, i pick a few Milkweed leaves for the caterpillars .... i also found this guy.   then i realized i had another baby caterpillar, and one leaf had 5 eggs on it; the brood is growing.   i'm going to need more containers.   the one egg that hatched, didn't survive.   so now we have more opportunities.  

after lunch one group moved rocks, and the other group worked in the garden transplanting seedlings, and i tied up tomato plants ...

today is Jess' birthday, ... so we got off work a little early and we went into town, used the internet, then met at Calypso for a birthday celebration.   they're famous for pizza' ... so i had pizza ... it wasn't as good as the one we fixed at Hacienda  :)

after dinner i was sitting outside and a group of kids came walking up ... with KALAMAZOO COLLEGE shirts on !    yes, they were from 'home' and doing their semester abroad here at University of San Francisco, who is partnered with the Univ of NCarolina, Chapel Hill.    we talked for quite awhile, but didn't find anyone we knew in common ...   small world !