Friday afternoon gardening

It’s so much fun watching the boys haul banana trees from the local banana tree nursery to our garden.   The boys are full of energy as they all vie for who is going to push the wheelbarrow.  Even young Benjami worked with all his might carrying one of the trees over his shoulder.  The kids are all involved in growing a fruitful garden.  While the boys are working Boss Gardener is trimming back a “lela” tree to allow for more sunshine and give the tree a pruning.  In the meantime, Zachary discovered that the tree not quite in the center of the garden is bearing fruit.  He picked six cashima, a sweet fruit full of seeds, which he ate immediately, planting the seeds for future trees.  Yesterday Wonel marked off an area where he planted carrots, eggplants, and tomato seeds.  Sugar cane is planted in the far rear of the garden, not that we are going to make sugar, but locals like to peel off the rough outer skin revealing a soft sweet white inner part of the plant, which they chew and enjoy the natural sweet flavor of sugar cane.

Like a garden anywhere in the world, sufficient water is needed to keep a garden healthy and growing.  It rains very little in Bondeau.  I see clouds all around, lightening in the sky, but no rain here.  A few nights ago, however, it rained and rained hard and strong, straight down.  The kids loved running around in the pouring rain getting soaking wet.  We placed huge barrels to catch the runoff from the roof.  They filled up in a very short amount of time.  So then we placed every bucket, basin, waste basket and anything that holds water to catch all the water possible.  The following morning the girls and Naomi used all the water to wash all the clothes, about three days’ accumulation.  We’ll continue to use rain harvesting and hopefully keep enough water on hand to water the garden when needed.

At our nightly chapel service here at Kay Timoun we either pray for rain or give thanks for rain.  It’s all part of life at Ste. Marie Madeleine Parish.  People pray for what they need and give thanks for what they have.