Scenes from the Road and from the Hill

As we were standing here at the bottom of our hill waiting for a taxi yesterday morning, I took this photo of our neighbor's pizza place just across the road. We were on our way in to Coxen Hole to pick up our car from the mechanic, go to the bank, grocery store and buy a new movie.

This is the entrance to our hill, directly across the road from the pizza place. The large tree on the right behind the white post is an avocado tree in bloom. Behind that tree is the home of Merlin's daughter, Laurie - owner of the pizza shop.

This is our very steep hillside below our deck and that is Merlin going down hill. We tried to talk her out of it since Don had once slipped and slid almost all the way down to the ravine. She didn't think the hill looked that steep and anyway, said she was used to climbing hills like that. She wanted to see if the large bunch of plantains were ready to pick and couldn't see them anymore from our deck. Then she wondered if someone had taken them or if they were just hidden. And yes, someone had.

While down there she decided to pick some pigeon peas from a large bush close to the bottom of the hill. She hadn't planned ahead to do this and had nothing to collect them in except her shorts pockets. At this point she decided that the hill was really quite steep.

Here she is trying to climb/crawl back up hill. She had already lost her flip flops going downhill and climbed back up barefoot. What a gal! She said she'll have one of her young, agile workers go down the hill and gather the rest of the peas tomorrow, let us shell them, and then she'll make us a big island lunch Tuesday with the peas, coconut milk and who knows what else. She's already planning a feast for when Rachel comes featuring corned beef, rockfish, crab, coconut milk, and vegetables. She said Dennis won't eat it but she likes to make it occasionally. She's also trying to talk us into eating iguana sometime. We told her to try that on Rachel. Island people really like iguana apparently.

Last night's sunset: The sun was just disappearing behind a low cloud and produced this aura.