Around the House

Painting in the Living Room

 Hola from Bananakeet!

Estate St Quacco and Zimmerman, Coral Bay, St John USVI, Oh Oh Eight T'ree Oh!

I had some great intentions today to go to my favorite beach but I got lazy and distracted, which is the attitude du jour of tropical climes. You can really while the day away. Every once in a while I look up from whatever I'm doing and take in the view, the sailboats, the clouds and weather, the hundred Bananaquits at the feeder and bathing in the plastic pot saucer. It's a pretty busy place around here. 
 For example, over a period of a few hours it can be still, windy, quiet, raucous, cloudy, sunny, rainy, buggy, cool, stifling. This is an island in the middle of a large ocean. Any number of boats go by. A car can drive back inland from the East End and you can watch it's progress. The bus can stop passing and you can wonder if it's broken down again.

You never know when something unexpected could happen. Like I found this Coki frog and had to catch and save it. He is tiny!

Saved by the Grocery List

So I'm looking up from typing to admire the view ..... what's this? People! It's the Whelk gatherers, out for their snail dinner. I grab the binoculars. OOOO they make me so angry! But it's what they do, what they've always done before us crab loving interlopers came. It's a cultural thing. They have already taken all the conchs, now they're depleting the whelk population too, destroying the shells. Live for the moment, it will last forever. They don't grasp the concept that it's all a weak tendril of connections. One life depends on another, it's a chain, and these are the chain breakers.

The dry season is progressing and settling in. The pond is almost empty of water, the birds have left. The mud gives off a rotting, sulfurous odor when the wind is right. No flowers are blooming. Leaves are falling off the trees, the hills are turning brown (er). Every day the sun beats down with an intensity that like touching a hot stove. Not too far down the road there's the smell of something dead. There's a quietness. People are edgy, impatient. Water trucks are back on the roads, and water is expensive. There's rain over Tortola, Sage Mountain in the rain forest. Elsewhere it's clear. It could be like this for months.

The bees are getting hungrier.They are desperate enough to go after the sugar in the bird feeder. I'm up to feeding them honey water twice a day now. 

While I'm down here I'm working on a bathroom renovation up in Massachusetts. All this can be done on line and through emails. I order the supplies and send pictures, my contractor does the work and sends me pictures back. Sometimes he sends me an email to the tune of  "you want to do WHAT?" and I want to say "Just do what I tell you, it's not YOUR house." but I don't because I'm on island time where the pace is simple and slow, and we practice tolerance. Except when you're parking at Starfish Market.

This is the website order for the shipping for an under-counter refrigerator at Lowe's. Good thing the shipping is FREE!

Might as well check my lantern, tea, incense and candle shipment. The package has gone from Springfield , MA to Catano, Puerto Rico. Almost here! This tracking thing is cool.

George has been out cutting back vines so I go say hello. These vines travel along the top of the trees then send down long spaghetti tendrils which root. Eventually they will weigh down the tree, pulling it over, or wrap themselves around it so tightly they choke the life out of it. They're called Strangler Vines. George has been cutting them and ripping them out by the roots. You have to trace them a long distance sometimes. 

Since he started this project last week an area of building debris has been exposed. I've been wanting to get rid of that stuff so I tackle it with the vice grips. 

There used to be a house here but a hurricane blew it away, Marilyn in '95. Everyone here likes to blame everything on Marilyn. Or Hugo '89. Before or After Marilyn. After Marilyn the West Indians couldn't afford to rebuild so they were forced to sell (just kidding and being snide) to rich Americans who tore the houses down and built huge McIsland Mansions, driving up land prices and property taxes. Life was better before Marilyn. People got along better, life was simpler, affordable. You get the picture.

There have been parts of this hurricane  house strewn over two acres - white vitreous china, a toilet seat, wood, metal hinges, strapping, concrete chunks, bricks, shiny porcelain tile, bottles, enamel pots. What I want to get at is a snarled ball of wire - fencing, hardware cloth, strapping, electrical cable and a green fishing net. It took 2 hours and one long cut. Tetanus shot - check!

George found a strand of barbed wire in a treetop. H'mmmm. Let's ponder that one, Pinky.

George made this shoe rack. He's pretty handy for a city boy. I love it, it works really well. We take our shoes off before we come in and change to our house shoes. It keeps your house clean. You can't leave your shoes outside because spiders, big ones, like to nap in them. Foot + spider in shoe = hell. If you ever forget and leave your hiking boots outside to dry , you better shake them out and stomp on them before you put them on.

I like this bathroom. I can't say this is a great house. The guy who built it is a lunkhead. He hired cheap Haitian labor, no one spoke English, bless their hearts, they did what they wanted and could do. The walls aren't straight, the windows don't work, materials are cheap and rotting, the deck is sinking, there are leaks, everything is always falling apart, the bathroom lights aren't centered on the mirror, the towel bars are crooked... but you know what they say - location, location. The view is what makes it, across the bay to the East End and the mountains of Tortola. But I do like this bathroom.

This is the living room. It's one big room. The sliding doors open all the way but we don't leave them open because  the mosquitoes, no-see-ums and birds fly in. We tried it, it seems like an ideal plan, very tropical living, very Architectural Digest, you see it in magazines all the time. In practice it's stupid. We had a Hummer come in and the poor thing practically had a heart attack. If these were better quality doors they would stand up to always being slid open and shut, but seeing as they aren't because the guy who built this house is a rum swizzling lugnut,  George is always realigning and oiling them. But this is where we spend all our time when we aren't on the porch.

There are two bathrooms downstairs, one for each bedroom, which are identical and boring. Just a bed, a dresser and closet. But we each get our own bathroom because there's never anyone visiting. My shower has a view of the garden, George gets a view of the hills and a peak at the ocean. If I could do one renovation it would be to have an outdoor shower, but we can't make it work. Darn.

The stacked washer/dryer is in an enclosed closet outside under the upstairs porch. There's a real island feel to doing laundry outside. A lizard lives in the closet, he's our laundry lizard. Unfortunately rats like to gnaw their way into the dryer vent and live there, chewing the electrical wires. 

Sloan, the Painted Man, has turned up to do some tree work. Sloan does all kinds of construction and handyman/house tending stuff. He's cute, he built his house and his sister's (she's an artist) , he doesn't drink to excess (rum and coke ), he has a new pick up truck, he's got a lot of talent and actually shows up to work. Anyone know a nice girl for Sloan?

This is Sloan's sisters website: http://www.awlmadehere.com/

Then the Bananakeet day is terminado.  Darkness comes on like a light has been switched off. CLICK! There's no change in the amount of daylight over the months, no shortening or lengthening of the days. This close to the equator day and night are almost equal.

 It looks like we might get some rain, if the wind shifted a little. We could sure use it, the bees agree.