Daily Photos: Retractable Roof for the Seedlings

Hammering away like it ain't no thing. Retractable roof in progress.

Alli's got a solid station where she keeps all her seedlings, letting the little buggers grow so they can beef up, get big, pass puberty and become ready to be planted in the ground. "Who run it" Three 6 Mafia once asked? Well at JTP, the Lady does when it comes to gardening. She noticed sometime back that seedlings in the middle of the table weren't getting enough sunshine. Unacceptable she said. The ones that received sun on an occasional basis throughout the day were bulking up faster than their shaded comrades. Solution: retractable roof!

I decided to head this up so the output is shoddy at best, but functional. I retied the roof, reorganized sticks and bamboo, slammed in a few nails and tied some loops to secure the new movable addition. The construction has yet to tumble down to the ground, which is encouraging. Wait, breaking news, as I was about to post this Alli told me very plainly: "It's broken," and then laughed. I'll get on that tomorrow. As for the seedlings, when the roof is popped back, they shinin.'

Get your shine on: the seedling table.

Compost Queen!

Alli had quite the triumphant day in the garden. She was getting her green thumb on no doubt! The reason for her lovely smile in these following photos is well worth it. Let me explain: the soil around here just ain't that grand. All of the sand and heavy rains washing nutrients away make it a struggle to grow more than a few standard crops (banana, papaya, tapioca, okra, cucumber and coconuts do well, but not always). Throw in some ravenous bugs, snails and monkeys, and a lot of what she plants gets devoured. I've seen steam shooting out of her ears in frustration on more than a few occasions. But not today.

Compost Queen rockin' the second compost bin scene.

Since the soil is mostly sad we have a few wooden compost bins lying about the project, three to be exact. These stupendous contraptions speed up the process of turning leaves (dead and alive) and other organic matter into dirt. Check out my earlier raking post if you want more of the low down on this. And today that dirt looked incredible!

Fine soil indeed, oooooo-weeeeee lay it on me!

That's right, we celebrated having some solid dirt around here on this fine Sunday. Many high-fives were given and "Hells yeah" were spoken (well maybe only I still use that silly phrase). Whatever the form of celebration, it was a joyous moment, especially for Alli, to gaze into that wooden box and see a low pile of attractive brown soil staring back at her. It has been a long time coming. She's been churning that pile for some time now; raking, stirring and keeping it well soggy with water when needed.

What a compost bin looks like filled up (also occurring today, the morning raking scene was busy). You can see from the other photos how much all this stuff be breaking down.

She plopped some in the wheelbarrow and let it slide into a new bed she's gonna plant. Papaya, amaranth, eggplant and cilantro are soon to find a new home in there. Hopefully we'll be munching on some of these crops in the near future. If not, then I'm sure we'll be cursing those previously scorned bugs, snails and monkeys. It's funny when you live here how quickly the monkeys go from a mesmerizing mammal to stare at, to dirty rotten thieves who plunder all your hard-work and snatch that delicious looking papaya you've been eyeing for some time. But regardless of the outcome, at least our soil will be looking high class!

Moving that fine lookin' dirt!

One School Group and the Best Turtle Quote Ever

Awhile back Alice Smith, an international school from Kuala Lumpur, spent a few days at the turtle project. A total of 150 high school kids came through the project in six different shifts over three days. Whammo! We were busy. We had groups of 25 on the grounds at each time and unfortunately the kids only came by once so we didn't get to know them too well since they only spent a few hours here then left. All groups got the usual conservation spiel of ours. Then it was activity time, which consisted of two things: either helping build terraces for a slew of new banana trees on a hillside or constructing fresh uniform signboards for our public outreach area. Alli was in charge of terracing and fruit, myself the wood, hammers, nails and chiseling that would eventually turn into signboards.

Alice Smith students, from Kuala Lumpur, getting busy putting in a banana terrace.

Motivating city high school kids who just want to holiday on a tropical island can be a daunting feat. I might just be getting old but the idea of profusely sweating outside, getting your hands dirty and ferociously pounding chisels with hammers is not on a younger generations' to-do-list. Some kids could care less, some went through the motions, while others seemed interested and then there were the ones who were super duper into it. One group out of the six was gung-ho: they went to town on the banana terraces and also helped me crank out some signboards, carving wood and notching posts like pros. The whole crew was rockin' in the free world. It was such a treat to see younger folk actually get behind some of the conservation (sea turtle and marine awareness) and self-sufficient (farming our own food) ideas we presented to them just before they started work.

One of the signboard crews chiseling away. I photobombed this one beautifully.

Plus the winner of the best turtle quote ever came from this bunch. The lines were spoken up on the hillside terrace, where Alli was lucky enough to hear them. It goes like this:

Teacher to students: "Alright everyone we have only five minutes left to work, as the taxis are already here to take us back."

Amazing student: "Five minutes!?!?! The turtles don't have five minutes! They're dying!!!"

He then proceeded to keep savagely shoveling away dirt on the hillside. So glorious. 

More enthusiastic students getting their banana terrace on.

Sweaty Man and the Banana Stand

Forgive our lack of posting, but we had to do a visa run to Singapore, which in itself is another story altogether. Soon it will be told via this blog. I also recently am a novice Kindle Fire owner due to a birthday present from my Dad. I'm still getting used to the device and my old-school media stubbornness has also not totally subsided yet either. A Kindle in the the hands of someone who subscribed to two newspapers, frequently purchased used books and possessed a prepaid Nokia before we left for Asia is an uphill battle. But I might be on the verge of being beaten down.

Mostly because hauling around an assortment of books in a large backpack in a tropical humid climate leads to a lot of perspiration, stank and less room for other essentials, like clothes and coffee. One issue I do have with the Kindle is that Blogger don't work on it so that's why no posts were blasted out into cyberspace on our holiday in Singapore. Now that we're back in Juara, and I'm in a jolly writing mood, we'll get back to our semi-regular broadcasting schedule.

Speaking of sweat (and maybe because my photo collection is lacking at the moment), the moment captured below is of me pruning one of our many banana trees. I'm also sweating profusely in the afternoon sunshine. We got a lot of bananas on the property and once in awhile someone needs to get our extended pruning machete out to chop down dead leaves, and other riff-raff we don't want on or near the trees. I love doing it, but I'm not quite a master banana manicurist yet. I might have accidentally scalped some banana fruit just a few minutes after this photo was taken. Luckily we still harvested the bunch some days later and all were delectable, except for the three I had decapitated. The bugs, and later the chickens, ate those.

Prune them banana leaves!