We are still pretty much on total lock-down. The entire country is in a state of emergency quarantine and curfew until who knows when. At this point, there have been 18 confirmed cases including 2 deaths in the whole country. The good news is that there has not been a new case reported all week. We are on a very restricted travel advisory and only recommended if absolutely necessary. There are checkpoints leaving and entering our village. They are only allowing you to leave for essentials, such as groceries or medical. They are not allowing you into the village unless you live here, and when you do enter they are spraying your vehicle with disinfectant. The village is really trying to keep the virus from affecting the people of San Antonio. At this time, only essential businesses are allowed to be open anywhere in Belize, and on Sundays, everything is closed and you are not allowed on the streets unless it’s an emergency or you could be arrested.

When we do have to venture into town we wear our facemasks around where there are other people and pretty much bathe in hand sanitizer once we get back in the truck. Other than that we are doing okay here, we still have water, electricity, plenty of food, and of course toilet paper. Just in case, we do have a generator with lots of fuel, a big backup water tank, lots of butane and of course patience. Hopefully, this will all be over soon and we can get back to a normal life and doing all the things that we took for granted.

This past week it was very HOT here! One of the days topped out at 115°F on our thermometer, the hottest we’ve ever seen it here.  The bad thing is that we are not allowed to go out to the rivers or other places we would normally go to cool off on hot days. The good thing is that last week we finally got the AC hooked up in the house, talk about timing. Another good thing is that this week the temps are back to 60’s-90’s, much better.

We are still plugging away with all of our “Someday” projects. We finally got water run to the garage, which involved digging up the mainline and tapping into it. We had this laundry sink that we didn’t use anymore behind the casita that we used to wash dishes in when we were living there. Now it has been moved to the side of the garage along with a hose spigot making it much more convenient for cleaning up around there.

Another “Someday’ project that we’ve been wanting to do is to build a garden planting bench. We had extra wood and tin left over from the house, so no better time to do it than now. We needed a place to get our seed trays going, re-pot plants and to store empty pots and garden supplies. We put it on the side of the garage next to the new sink, which is perfect because now we can water the plants and clean up once we are done.

We have been busy expanding our vegetable garden beds for all the new seedlings we planted. The seedlings are big enough to be on their own now, so we stuck them out in the real world. We put in at least 40 tomato plants, 50 sweet bell peppers, a bunch of cantaloupes and more okra. There should hopefully be enough for all the animals, bugs, and for us to have some too. Most of the seeds we buy here, with the exception of the tomatoes. Kelley had a nice roma tomato that was going bad so she threw it out in the yard. A couple of weeks later it sprouted, so she dug them up and put them in the seed trays till they got bigger. Now that they are big enough to go in the ground they should supply us with some nice tomatoes.

We just picked another 88 bananas. These are what they call local bananas and are smaller than your normal bananas. We got them hanging on the porch now and they should start to ripen in the next week or so, which means more banana everything.

Another project was to get a good clear coat on the two toucans and the iguanas before the rainy season gets here. Of course, I’m talking about the big wood carvings in the yard.

It seems that lately, the Toucan Hideaway is really living up to its name. There have been toucans here just about every day now for quite a while. We have learned to recognize their sound and when we hear it we go out and usually spot them in the trees. They seem to really like the big tree next to the casita, which is a wild breadnut tree. Plus this being the dry season a lot of the trees have lost their leaves making birds much easier to spot and to get good pictures of.

Even the parrots are stopping by the Toucan Hideaway. I’m sure they’re just admiring all the work we’ve been doing around here lately. Yah…but more than likely they’re just checking out what we’ve been planting for their future meals.

After a hot day of working around the yard, there’s nothing better than sitting down and relaxing with an ice-cold beer. Well, we can possibly say goodbye to that! We have heard rumors that Belikin is stopping all production of beer until further notice, and that doesn’t sit well with us. If for some reason we start getting irritable and losing weight, then I’m blaming Belikin!

If I seem to be talking too much about all our projects or how the garden is doing, remember that’s pretty much what our lives revolve around at this point. Which is a good thing because we are getting a lot of things done around here and this place should be in top shape when you come down to visit us.

Take care and be safe.