Not much has been happening around here since our last post. Just small projects and tending to all the plants around the yard. That’s all about to change, as we have a very busy February and March coming up. We have friends coming down who have never been here, and we are very excited to show them our little piece of paradise. Then after they leave, Darren is coming back down for ten days with a friend. Then while Darren’s here our other neighbors, Craig & Monica show up for a couple weeks. Amanda’s also got some friends staying up here for a couple days. After that our other neighbors, Chuck & Roxi, who built next to us will be here for a couple weeks. During that time, we will also be heading to Placencia twice. One to show our friends around and do some fishing and another to catch an end-of-season a Lobster-bash. While in Placencia, we’ll also meet up with another friend who will be down there for a couple of weeks. It’s going to be a fun and exciting six weeks or so. I just hope our livers can hold out.😎

Our local produce market asked us if we had any whole cacao pods we were willing to sell. We told him that there was a bunch ready and we could supply him with some. He said that he would like a dozen, then he said 2 dozen, so we ended up taking him 3 dozen nice big cacao pods. He was very impressed with the quality and size of our cacao. Then he told us that there is only one other person in the area who grows cacao, but theirs are small and don’t compare to the ones we brought him.

Our produce guy has a customer out on Caye Caulker who needed some for a beauty product they make. We had no idea how to price them, because we’ve never seen whole cacao pods for sale. We let him name the price because he knew what he was going to sell them for, and we were very pleased with what he offered us. I’m thinking this year we might just sell most of our cacao pods to the market instead of making chocolate with them.

Not to worry though, we still have somewhere around 40lbs of dried cacao beans ready to be roasted and made into chocolate.  Because we hadn’t made any chocolates since Christmas, it was time to make up some more. Kelley made a bunch of dark chocolate bars, small candies with craisins, and some with peanuts. We also found some small snack size coconut flavored wafer cookies at the market and thought they would be good covered in chocolate. They turned out good, sorta like a coconut-chocolate, Kit-Kat bar. If we can ever find these wafer cookies again, we will be making more.

It looks like it’s time to fire up the grill and toss some steaks on. One of the logs on our new paths busted out with an abundance of oyster mushrooms. These mushrooms are our favorites, especially when sautéed in butter with some onions, then topped on a steak. I guess we’ll be taking a hike around the property and see if we can find some more.

It had been a while since we bought any new paintings, so we commissioned our friend Jorge Landero to paint us another one. Right above the TV we decided to move a few small paintings we had and get a bigger one of a toucan. We told him the size it needed to be and what we wanted it to look like, and he did a fantastic job. Now when we are watching TV, it looks as if we are looking out of one of our windows.

We also had him paint a mermaid for our friends Ron & Rhonda down in Placencia. He did a great job on it with all the bright colors and it should look great in their beach house. With all the long, wavy hair on the mermaid, we even think it looks a little like Rhonda.

It has been on and off rain for quite a while now, but we are finally getting some sunny days. So we decided to start working on our new garden trails again. It was time to get the mushrooms that I made into the ground and see how they looked. We think it adds a little color and a whimsical feel to the garden.

Last year we decided to make an arch over the trail that heads out towards the back area. We searched the property for some good, hard vines to use for the arch, then attached them to a couple of trees over the pathway. We put some variegated philodendrons along with some thunbergia (blue trumpet vines) at the base of the trees where the arch was. The plants have finally grown up to the arch and are really starting to take off. The philodendron has big yellow and green leaves and the thunbergia gets clusters of draping purple flowers. In a year or so, when it fills in and has purple flowers hanging down, it should look pretty good.

The trees across from our front porch and above the casita are currently loaded with different berries and have attracted a lot of birds. The other morning, while we were sitting out there having breakfast, there were 4 Aracaris (a type of toucan) all in the trees eating berries.

Along with them, there was a bird that we rarely see, a Red-capped Manakin. He’s a small, beautiful bird that looks like he was put together with whatever bird parts were left over. He has a bright red head with yellow eyes on a jet-black body with bright yellow legs.

Then there was also a colorful Motmot, a woodpecker, and a squirrel cuckoo hanging around in the trees. Plus a bunch of other smaller birds feasting on all the little berries. And of course, the hummingbirds all around the feeders. We saw all of these in about ten minutes while we sat on the porch eating our breakfast. Kelley commented, wouldn’t it be nice to just sit there for a couple hours and see what else comes around. That’s about what we’ve been up to the past couple weeks, mostly plants and birds.

It’s funny how one day your life revolves around racing motorcycles, skateboarding in swimming pools, snow skiing black diamond trails, water skiing, bull riding, and living life to its fullest. Then everything just slows down and stops, and now you get excited when you see new sprouts on your plants or see a certain bird. It’s funny how life changes.