Rainy Day

 
It rained today, almost all day.  I'd hoped to take a walk but I'd have ended up drenched because I don't walk fast enough to have gotten around in the time between showers today.





I looked out at the garden between rain showers today and saw bits of yellow on the tomato plant.  Flowers!  On the tomato plant!  So I dashed out before the rain started again to snap a photo.





The cucumber vines have blossoms too.  I had to untangle them from the mint that's growing alongside the bales and wind them onto the trellis wires.  When the rain stops I'll go out to yank out a lot of the mint to give the cukes room to roam.





Now that I have my good camera back I took a closeup of the spiderwort flowers.  They were open most of the day since the sun only came out for about a minute late in the afternoon and I'm convinced that the spiderwort flowers don't like the hot sun.






The hawk was back in the birdbath this afternoon and I managed to capture it taking its little sitz bath.  The water is so shallow it's a wonder it gets wet at all.  It has to contort its neck to get a drink too.

 20 June--Barbara Malcolm, Tropical Obsession. 

Sam and Maxi parked in the lot across the road from the dive site Thousand Steps.  They had been on the island for nearly two weeks and were systematically diving their way up the coast from south to north.  Some of their friends from the dive shop at home had given them advice on how to dive the island but they had pored over a diving guide and pulled a dive site map off the Internet and decided that they were just going to take them in order, and they had. 

It was a good thing that they were experienced divers or the first day’s dives would have stopped them cold.  After their check out dive in the swimming pool-like area across the road from the Dive Inn, they put four more tanks in the back of their Toyota HiLux pickup truck and set out for the dive site near the extreme south end of the island.  Red Slave dive site perches on a small promontory like a pimple on the smooth chin of Bonaire.  Luckily the wind had dropped that morning and the waves had laid down some.  That meant they were able to enter the water over the jagged and slippery rocks without too much trouble and when they submerged the current was not very strong. 

As was his habit Sam picked out a coral head topped by a yellow sponge as the landmark to turn at when coming back to their entry point.  They had heard from some of the people at the restaurant last night that currents at Red Slave could be challenging but that day they were lucky.  All of their dives had been great, the weather was cooperating, fish were posing, and all of their gear was working well.  No problems, no surprises. 

Maxi had a gift for getting resort managers and property owners to grant them permission to cross their land or use their house reef.  She very courteously offered to rent their tanks before they could insist and most of the time her offer was waved off, so they were not even spending too much extra for tank rental.  Doing two or three dives a day for the last ten days had put them in pretty good shape so the prospect of carrying all their scuba gear including tanks and weights down the long stone staircase of the dive site known as Thousand Steps did not make them stop for a minute.  In fact, they were excited to finally be diving as such a famous site in such a beautiful and isolated setting.  

 

I was determined to start getting rid of stuff on the shelves under the basement stairs.  I packed up one box and then went down to pack up another one.  I'd forgotten how easy it is to get rid of one box worth.  I'll do it again.  Maybe tomorrow.
--Barbara