August 1
Life in the jungle: Over two months ago I got sick. This morning I had another cough attack. Everything is pretty wet outside. There is no point in working outside today. Everything will turn to mud quickly. I started writing Chapter 1 of my new book project about my bike ride. A good handful of times there were heavy downpours throughout the entire day. I was able to write and complete a 6,700 word Chapter #1 first draft. I didn’t expect Chapter 1 to go so smoothly.
With all the rain my apartment septic bed is flooded
August 2
Life in the jungle: I started my day proofreading the first chapter that I wrote yesterday – I am calling it – Who, what, when, where, why and how? I never saw this coming but I couldn’t read the chapter without a whole bunch of tears. I got out of my seat after reading it and the only thing that came out of my mouth was a quiet “fuck me.”
There was only one rain shower this morning and it was a doozy. There was a crack of lightning and thunder so loud it caused me to jump out of my seat and swear all in the same instant.
I went up to the village for groceries and brought my laptop with me. All my bike ride blog posts are in the cloud and I needed the extra signal strength to download them to my computer. I need all my old blog posts as research material for the rest of the book chapters.
The road is a mess
Getting back from the village I spent some time in the coconut field. With all the rain I feared a lot of the seedlings recently planted needed an individual inspection. Which was the case for a lot of them. With so much rain and flooding many of the seedlings had the dirt holding their roots washed away. I just needed to go around them with my foot and press the ground towards the trunk. The soft dirt and mud did the rest. I also went down to the ponds and checked on them there. I brought a wheelbarrow load of coconuts back to the house. I have so many coconuts just getting old instead of being used to make coconut oil.
I sent Chapter 1 to four people for proofreading.
August 3
Life in the jungle: Today was a house-cleaning day. While I pride myself on being a neat freak and a spotlessly clean house person this place is dirty. A call from my Aunt Henny regarding my book used up the rest of my day.
August 4
Life in the jungle: I started my morning chopping in the coconut field. By the time it was breakfast time, I was so soaked in sweat I had no choice but to take a shower. All that sweating required a recuperation nap in the hammock.
A Christmas card from my brother arrived for me today
We had no rain yesterday and I suspected no rain was coming today. So, because things were pretty dry I got a coat of primer paint on about half of the remaining unpainted part of the greenhouse. Later in the afternoon, I did a clean-up in the tool rooms. Ants were making their homes underneath the floor and they had dug up dirt through the cracks in the cement.
I got some painting of the greenhouse completed today
August 5
Life in the jungle: Belize Immigration took an hour this morning. I guess mostly I am just thankful they haven’t given me a hard time in a few months. A hot day in the city. Every trip to the city is hot. I don’t know how people live here (in the city).
A dead mud eel discovered on the road
Arriving home, I had a pineapple top to plant at the ponds so I did that and a little chopping. In the last part of my day, I started working on some small plant boxes. Many weeks ago, I planted some passion fruit seeds that are ready to be planted in the ground. I need the plant boxes for the passion fruit vines that I wish to plant.
The road is in pretty bad shape. The vegetation/jungle is encroaching on the roadway. I used to pay Jack for half his labor to maintain the road as my way of 50% of our road maintenance. Now the entire two mile road is my problem.
Snake waiting boy – local name for skink lizards
August 6
Life in the jungle: Today did not exactly go as planned. I woke up early enough but then there was a morning rain shower. The rain was hard enough and long enough that chopping in the coconut field would have been a little miserable. Instead, I wrote two blog posts before breakfast – Belize Part 31 and 32. After breakfast, I decided to get my visit to the grocery store out of the way. I stopped in at Verna Mae’s place and she was about to start juicing some Jamaican limes. So, I stayed long enough to get all the seeds from her. I spent the rest of the day bagging 187 seeds and seed bags with dirt. I feel like I have over 100 more seeds to plant for tomorrow. But I am certain I will run out of black dirt before they all get bagged.
That’s a lot of lime seeds
I received my first edited copy of Chapter 1 of my book from someone I asked to proofread the chapter for me. Thunder and lots of rain tonight.
I discovered a Mexican masked tree frog under my wheelbarrow
August 7
Life in the jungle: There was rain throughout the night and into today until after lunch. I start my morning reviewing some suggested Chapter 1 edits provided by one of my proofreaders. When I noticed that the rain had stopped, I went outside. I needed to finish planting the remaining lime seeds from yesterday. I bagged another 53 seed bags before I ran out of bags and black dirt for a total of 240 lime seeds planted. I ended up having 140 remaining seeds that I double-planted in the first bags I planted. After that job, I finished building the plant boxes for my passion fruit plants. I placed and planted the passion fruit plants around the entire house.
That’s a lot of lime seeds planted
One of many passion fruit vine planting boxes made and vines planted
I got an email this morning (on a Sunday???) that said my work permit application has been approved and to wait for further instructions. This afternoon I came across a female tailless whip scorpion with babies. I have never seen a mom with babies before.
A female Tailless whip scorpion with babies
August 8
Life in the jungle: I woke up at 6 AM. I could hear it raining outside. I fell back asleep and woke up just before 10 AM. If I have to take a nap in the afternoon, I take a nap. But waking up at 10 AM just feels lazy. Waking up so late threw me off my game. I started my day by finishing my review of my proofreader’s edits to Chapter 1 of my book. I sort of lost interest in working on my book. I transitioned to proofreading some recent blog posts I recently wrote. I then moved on to organizing photos off my phone. That was until I remembered that I had planned to plant seedlings today. I planted 7 cashews, 8 soursop, 5 Indian lime and 5 local lime seedlings in the coconut field right up till dark. There was no more rain today.
I came across an unusual looking beetle today
Belize Part 37 (July 27 to 31)
Belize Part 36 (July 21 to 26)
Glossary of Terms
Glossary of words or people that may or may not be part of this blog post. This glossary will be at the bottom of every blog post for Belize.
Jack & Jill – These are my ex-property managers (names changed). They are Canadian, they introduced me to Belize in 1997, sold me their house in Belize in 2003, and rebuilt my house from 2014 to 2018. I have known them for over 30 years. After almost 20 years of me supporting their life here in Belize Jack decided quite unexpectedly to declare “war” on me right before Christmas 2021. They would end up stealing my business license and causing me a lot of grief. They live on the farm, but not on my land.
Wayne – He is the son of the original owners of the farm (both owners are deceased). The original farm was 2 – 30 acre pieces minus 2 – ¾ acre parcels for my house and 2 – ¾ acre parcels that Jack & Jill own which were all originally purchased from the original owners. In 2017 Wayne sold me 40 acres of land from the original 60 acres (30 acres plus 10 acres). Wayne lives in his parent’s house and has a few cows on his remaining 17 acres of land.
The ponds – I have 2 large (300ft long x 50ft wide x 10ft deep) ponds on my 30 acre parcel of land which is basically jungle. I have about 60 coconut trees (mostly mature) around the ponds. I have plans to plant a few hundred papaya trees here plus other fruit-bearing trees around the ponds.
The coconut field – I have about 400 coconut trees planted (various growth states) on about 3 acres of cleared land of the 10 acre parcel. I plan to add various fruit trees to the same field as soon as I can.
The river lot – my house sits on an ¾ acre lot. I have a second joining ¾ acre lot that allows me river frontage on the Belize River. I call that my river lot.
The dry – Belize has 2 main seasons. The rainy season and the dry (no rain). The wet is obviously the rainy season.
Chopping – using my machete to clear brush, vines, weeds and unwanted trees
