a whole month!

well we have just been not writing up anything.
lets see. not much to tell really.
but we went to the beach and had a glorious few days. you never know how much you miss the sea until you see it again. had a pair of prescription goggles. very useful. saw fishies in the seaweed and chased them a little. had great icecream made by an italian couple in placencia. saw a whole heap of pelican just chilling out around the place. and while we ate lunch one of the days we saw two kids climbing a tree to get what looked like unripe fruit so after we finished eating and they were gone we went and got a ripe one we could see. having never seen a guava before i was puzzled. yet having just drank guava juice i was able to smell what the fruit was so i hid it from zee as she loves guavas. a few seconds of childish running saying "i'm not telling!" and i relented. we ate it as we scooted along the edge of the carribeen sea and looked at young conches as they sluggishly walked along the sea-floor.
the day we got there we went for a long walk up the beach and went as far as the final point of land you can see on placencia's beach. loads of early morning swims and late night swims(is that a shark!) finally got lobstered up, though i have to wonder why folk spend a whole holiday making up for lost time by staying on the beach all day. we only needed about an hour and we really only did that twice. wandered the whole town. we were staying in a place called carol's cabanas. it was nice and simple. cooker fridge bathroom breakfast area bedroom and veranda(with mozzie shielding set to maximum). all we needed.

the trip back up was fun. we had a fair amount of time to waste and so went to get icecream before going to the ferry and when we reached the ferry it was pulling back in to collect someone who had just missed it. strolled on and on the other side we speedwalked up to the bus station(it takes about ten minutes) and the bus was just arriving. got a seat on the bus easily. down the back. then a nice mexican gentleman with bristling tattoos told us it was his seat. figuring that i liked earth i just said grand and we moved to seats opposite him. and then on came a guy selling "lemon juice. tamarind juice!" zee said "lemon please!". oh. wait. "i have no lemon juice". and another guy sold us mango slices(unripe) with cayenne pepper and sugar. it was lovely. listening to our mp3 players on the way up to block out the horrendous radio station trying to crawl into our heads. i was bumping along to the balfa brothers. a very cool creole band from cajan country and they have some great tunes i tell ya. every big stop a few guys would get on and give us the option of buying a bit of food to tide us over. and a girl got on just over halfway with loads of fresh "cinnamon bons" and as she worked her way down the bus we hummed and hawed not knowing what she was selling. the second zee heard her say "cinnamon" money was near thrown from zee's hand. "you cannot resist the power of the bark-side luke".
i tell ya, the bus was better serviced than any in ireland. granted, it may not look all flashy but the seats are comfortable enough and the food we were offered was a hundred times nicer and nobody felt like they were being screwed over for a sandwich. and they will drop you off wherever it is you need to be dropped off during the route.

so back in the homestead. eating green beans that were planted about a month into us arriving and looking at the land.
finally got around to lighting a fire today for some cashew nuts. i did not know they were so much work! if you get the raw juice from the fruit around the nut onto you it will burn,like acid! so you fire roast the nuts and shuck them after they are dry, i now appreciate how much effort goes into making just one nut edible. as well as roasting the nuts we fired a few of the random pieces of claywork we made a while back. now while the clay cracked while it was drying we figured it would be a good way to see if the clay fired well. so now we have a few nice looking fragments that are vitrified and so we know the clay works as does the simple way of just heating them up and putting them in the fire embers.
i made a small sculpture just there too. using the local rock. couldn't really tell what rock it was. it was all dusty and yellow and dirty. on cleaning it however i found out that it was a lovely rosy marble! come to think of it, i have seen pieces in museums made from just this stuff and from this part of the world too. and also while sanding and filing it smooth i had an idea that you could use vinegar to smooth the stone down a bit. i dont' know where this idea sprang from but i have vague recollections of hearing the idea somewhere before. so when i was near finished out came the brush and a bowl of vinegar. it worked! now the piece is super smooth and nicely polished.the vinegar burnt away the gritty parts and gave the whole piece a uniform finish. it is only small but it looks lovely. i wanted the piece to look like it might still be a pebble and i think it worked very nicely. now i am making a slightly bigger piece and carefully chipping away small pieces so as not to crack the whole thing down the middle.

so that's the lot. there is more in between the month but that's all the interesting stuff i think. more soon enough, i promise.