October 2022 was a memorable month! We celebrated the life of a good friend gone too soon (we miss you Jeff), went to the Fiestas Patronales of Aguada, and had a fun Halloween. We even adopted a cat (or did he adopt us) straight from the forest. We named him Pumpkin because of his timing along with our pumpkins.
September 2022 was a bit stressful because of Hurricane Fiona. It was nothing compared to Maria, but still affected us. We lost power for about 2 weeks and had to cancel little Aeden’s birthday party. Septembers are always an emotionally powerful time! We moved to Puerto Rico one September long ago too!
Rainbow from above
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We have a lot to be thankful for this year. So many changes have occurred. This time last year we were just getting the electricity working again after two months without! Things were starting to come back to life, but the shock waves were still pulsing.
Walking on a “beach” this time last year (2017)
Beach sunset with Baby Aeden this year
In the year that followed we continued to clean up from the mess of the hurricane and then I became pregnant for the first time ever after many years of trying! It was a wonderful gift but also very taxing on me, and Britton. He had to take care of the whole property and also help me. During this time, Britton’s father became sick and died and that was very hard on us because we are so far from the rest of the family. Additionally we started the flower business and continued to push forward.
My sweet baby!
When Baby Aeden was born right around the anniversary of Hurricane Maria, we experienced a sigh of relief that was short lived. Only 5 days after he was born I became very sick and was hospitalized for nearly 2 weeks out of the first 3 of his life. In a very short period of time I came to understand how precious and yet fragile life really is. I am so grateful to still be here in this realm with these two loves: Britton and Aeden.
Britton and Aeden at the beach
We spent Thanksgiving with our friends Missy and Ben and their family as well as other great friends who have helped us through this very tough year. We are so grateful to them. I don’t know how we could have managed that without them.
Thanksgiving dinner
Delicious food on fancy china!
Baby’s got to eat too!
A visit to a neighbor’s tortoise
So beautiful!
Climbing palm trees!
Baby hanging with the big kids
I love Thanksgiving because it gives us the opportunity to step back and reflect on what we are truly thankful for in our lives: our family, our friends, and our beautiful, precious and fleeting lives. Our life is full of thanks!
PS: Baby Aeden is now over 2 months old and doing great!
Our tropical food and other adventures continue daily.
Fresh, delicious papaya
This month we harvested our first papayas as well as our very first pineapple. I have never been a big fan of papayas because to me they smell a little like vomit. But this variety was actually pretty good and didn’t have the smell.
Pineapples are probably up there as one of my very favorite fruit, and we’ve had such issues with root rot here that I got so excited I just had to wear our first little harvest on my head along with some home-grown bananas! Haha, poor Britton always has to put up with my silly shenanigans.
Just call me Chiquita
In addition, it’s avocado season in full steam. Nearly every meal and snack now includes fresh avocados. Each evening and sometimes morning we go scour beneath the avocado trees. We have found four large mature avocado trees and we have planted another 8 or so, that are off-season varieties so (hopefully) soon we will be so overrun with avocados we won’t know what to do! Most days we’ve collected about 5-10 large avos. It’s amazing how much you can extend a meal when you have avocados. We have them with our eggs in the morning, with salads at lunch and with pretty much anything for dinner (nachos, rice and beans, etc).
A typical daily breakfast is almost all home grown -avos, mangos, starfruit, and scrambled eggs. We look forward to growing our own peppers soon too
Large orange iguana hanging out eating our fruit too- on the parcha vine!
The animals are all doing well. The baby turkeys are now living in the coop in a smaller cage and we take them out for walks daily until they are hawk-proof (about 3 months old). And of the two chicken chicks that survived from the original 6, one was a hen and the other a rooster. The hen is a gorgeous black chicken mix of auracana and Jersey giant and lays really cool green olive-colored eggs. The rooster is beautiful and huge, working for his place in the pecking order.
The birds crowding around Britton at dinner time
There are still four large male turkeys toms, and we need to decrease numbers because they fight a lot. But we want to wait until we have a stove and fridge to properly handle them. In the mean-time they are looking more beautiful than ever.
Turkey looking good
We are in the midst of a large project that I will write about once it is completed, but we have had quite a few days off as well. We have been going to the beach, hanging out, and playing music with friends.
Afternoon rain clouds form at Steps Beach after we went snorkeling and the water turned an amazing color
September is a quiet month in Rincón. The local Puerto Rican tourists have left and the North American tourists haven’t arrived yet. There are afternoon rains nearly daily, threats of hurricanes, and the heat can be super intense to work outside. (We take LOTS of showers and have all the fans on after sweating outside!) But I still wouldn’t trade it for anything.
When we’re not working we spend a lot of time just chillin’ in the Big Sky park of our yard with its ever changing painting