July Musings

Seriously? It’s August?

July began with a party. A lovely July 4th party held by one of our American friends. I was honoured to have been invited, even though we’re not American. It was a beautiful day – I know, I know, I say that a lot because most days here are beautiful, but the humidity level wasn’t too high and there was a cool breeze. Good food, good friends, a very special day.

I decided to add popsicles/paletas to our repertoire of cold and frozen offerings at our store, and so I bought some popsicle moulds from the Chinese supermarket across the road and started experimenting with various flavours. It took a bit of tweaking, but I made 8 flavours that I thought I could sell and Michael and I had fun testing it all out!

Once I was certain people would like them (what’s not to love?), I imported a couple of decent moulds from the US and production began in earnest. I now make popsicles in the mornings and by the next morning, they are ready to sell. We had to buy a new freezer.

Our Wednesday get-togethers continue to be one of the highlights of our week. Each Wednesday was at a different person’s home and offered us an opportunity to get to know everyone better. Quite a few people left for their home countries for a few months, so there were less of us. Still, we really enjoy these evenings and look forward to seeing our friends come back in November and January.

Our neighbours have added a couple of chickens to their property. They’ve started growing vegetables and the chickens are a good way to keep the bugs down. However, Lucy thinks they are her personal playthings and chases them at every opportunity. Of course, they’re too big for her to catch, but we often hear them clucking and look over the wall in time to see Lucy stalking them.

Mid-July saw us at the annual Lobsterfest and this year was the best ever! They’d changed the location of the beer tent to the very end of the boardwalk making it easier to sample all the lobster on offer, and check out all the other items for sale before buying a few few drinks and finding a seat to listen to the steel drum band in the afternoon.

Placencia is in full bloom and everywhere is awash with colour. I planted a container garden in my yard with beautiful roses, Sedge, Buttercups, Jasmine, Bougainvillia and Mint. I plan to expand at every opportunity.

Summer marks the start of the rainy season and hurricane season, although not much activity in that area yet. But we’ve been getting rain most nights and quite a few thunder storms.

Our social life didn’t slow down – we had martinis with friends at Serenian Bay Martini Bar where we enjoyed spectacular sunsets from the elevated bar area,

and then a lovely afternoon at a farm in Red Bank called the Swasey River Farm run by a couple of Zimbabweans – my country of birth.

On the 22nd we said goodbye our our sweet cat, Maggie. She’d had some kind of jaw pain for about a year. I’d taken her to three different vets with no cure. Eventually, she was put on painkillers which she hated taking. Her quality of life shrank to spending her days sleeping on a chair in the living room. No more exploring outdoors or growling at people walking by. No more nosy neighbour peeking through the veranda bars to see what’s going on. I couldn’t do it to her anymore and so, one Saturday morning, the vet came to our house and put her to sleep. It was a sad day as we remembered how we’d taken her from Vancouver to Edmonton and from Edmonton to Spain and then to Belize. My only consolation is that she spent her final years in the warm sun that she loved so much.