This week.....

Gracious time does fly. Since being back from Fiji JJ has been away for a fortnight to Honiara in the Solomon Islands for work, bringing home with him the Defence Attaché for a visit. The DA left on Thursday and now both JJ & Darren have departed for Kiritimati Island (pronounced Christmas Is) and onto Honolulu for another 2 weeks. Hmmm, the life for some!!!!

I was chatting to a friend at the Australian High Commission today and she coined how I am feeling exactly, one step forward, many steps back!! That is exactly how I am feeling about my garden. We put up fencing and barriers out of what was lying around but now the garden soil is sieved of all coral stones, had copra and compost added and it is so ready for planting, you can smell the richness in the soil the damn chooks think it is their personal domain or their own oversized dinner plate, I can’t keep them out!!!! I had planted the last of my precious zucchini, also spinach and capsicum and tomatoes. I gather by now the seeds are well and truly chook poo!!!

Meei's son and his brother-in-law sieved all the soil in the veggie garden, the piles of rocks are all the coral they got out, made a huge difference to the beds!!!

As Mana arrived from Abaiang with rocket in hand and we had found some beautifully ripe tomatoes we decided a 'Hamburger Party' was in order!! Fresh rolls were prepared, patiies made and let the wonderful joy of a colourful hamburger, brimming with fresh veggies begin.........tarrra, tarrra!!!

The land mass to the right that is quite hazy is our atoll of Batio. Mana and I are sitting at Carriers hotel one atoll above the 5 atolls that are connected by causeways. We walked cross at low tide.

One of the sleeping bure at Carriers.....

so we walked over but going back was a slightly different due to an incoming tide, so we caught the local ferry!!!!!

It was a great day out and now I know it is there I will go again. The drive however is a long one as the road past the airport is full of potholes that I thought our little RAV4 was going to disappear into at times but our feet stayed dry!!!! Just along from Carriers is a ship building yard and we were shown over it by the foreman whom is an Aussie volunteer, they also have a few sidelines the main one being clam farming for the aquarium markets mainly in the USA and Germany, they are found here in the Kiribati Islands and bought to the clam farm to grow, they also harvest some of their own with these amazingly huge clams that are in their 40's!!! Not such good photos, the colours were amazing, a real feast for the eyes, I could quite happily have stayed there all day gazing at the beautiful colours and patterns on the lips of the clams.

Tia Boo Moa (see you soon) xx