You Never Know

You just never know what the Lord has in store for you each day, like today....

With all the rain we've been having, our yard was beginning to resemble a jungle. We've had our favorite gardener, Julio, here for a week, trimming, weeding, clearing. He's such a good worker and has worked on our property enough that we don't even have to give him any instruction, he just knows what to do. And we don't worry about what he might do if we are gone, as we were yesterday. He finishes his day at 4; we got home around 6 p.m., so he was long gone. No problem.

This morning, I heard Merlin hollar out a greeting from the top of our stairs and then engage Julio in conversation. As I came out to talk to her, I heard the word "hand" mentioned several times. She then asked me if I knew that Julio had almost cut off the end of his finger. What!?!...no...when? Yesterday, while sharpening our clippers, while we were gone. And now he was trying to cover up the wound today with a leaf!

I had him come down onto the deck and sit down while I went inside to get a basin of warm, soapy water, hydrogen peroxide and the first aid kit. Wow, he sure did slice off a nice chunk. I considered taking him to the clinic, but it wasn't bleeding anymore and looked like he had had it wrapped very tightly during the night, perhaps too tight, also, there was nothing to stitch - that tip was just gone. It was dirty from him trying to work with it unwrapped - guessing he has no band-aids. He indicated that he had used peroxide last night in "mi casa". Well, that's something anyway. He lives in one of the colonias and may not even have running water in his house, let alone a first aid kit.

I cleaned it up, applied an antibiotic ointment with lidocaine for pain (he said it did hurt), wrapped it in gauze and then Coban, which is a stretchy waterproof and self-sticking type of wrap. I told him to come back at 4 p.m. when he finished work and we would repeat the process. I had to go look up phrases in the online translator as he speaks only Spanish and I just don't know many first aid terms yet. I checked on him later to make sure the bandage was staying on, and he said it was fine. I asked him if he was able to work, and he said "si". He has a family to feed; he must work. I'll keep a close eye on that finger though.

This is a closeup of the lobster claw heliconia that Merlin brought me a few days ago. Yesterday Merlin told Julio to dig up some of her plants and move them to my yard. He hasn't gotten to that yet and may have to wait a few more days before he tries.

We helped our friends, Debi and Bob, make a temporary move this morning. The owners of the house they are renting are flying in today for a 10 day stay, so we helped them move their stuff (fortunately, not much) to the place where they have a time-share. It's also right on the beach with a very nice pier with a sunset-viewing platform. Debi claims they have the best sunset views on the island. Well, we'll see about that! They are closer to the reef than we are on our beach and they have two ocean kayaks - woo hoo!! So we'll be spending some time down there. And we'll compare sunset photos.