Keep Track of Julia: August 2019

It's been almost two months since I last posted. To be honest, I have all but forgotten about this blog until a few days ago.

After being bitten by Judith's dog, my immune system must have been a bit low as I got another cold which left me in bed for 3 days. Then, joy of joys, two big pieces broke off one of my teeth. When I went to the dentist to get it fixed, he discovered another tooth that was sensitive needed a root canal. So after having that done, I now have to have that tooth crowned and another tooth that was crowned in Qualicum some years ago has to be extracted. I am such a frequent patient that the dentist does the x-rays for free and he said he would do the extraction free of charge as well. All of this not only put me off my game, but kept me out of the pool for over a month as well. Happy to say that I am back to swimming now.

We have been doing art group intermittently. Deanne, who hosts us on those days has a lovely garden. These are flowers picked from her garden making our art venue even more beautiful than usual.

I have a new class with two Tamil kids, brother and sister who come once a week on Tuesdays now. The boy is older but much less skilled than the girl. They are nice kids though, 16 and 14, so we can talk about books and movies almost like adults. They come for spoken English only, so that makes it easy and fun. Good thing too, as the other two classes have been very hit and miss lately.

On the home front, I have been pampering a passion fruit vine for over 2 years now. Finally, my efforts have borne fruit, literally.

Hidden fruit

The flowers only open in mid-afternoon when there is full sun, so I thought that there were no real flowers. The fruit grows out the the centre of the flower, so they are short lived. Spectacular though.

Starting to ripen. Luckily, this vine is the red variety. There is also a yellow variety, but it is not as tasty.

Our first crop. Managed to keep it away from the monkeys. I have my gun loaded and ready should they even think about going after my fruit.

They look like eggs when cut open. Wonderful colour and flavour.

The patio is developing nicely. Judith gave me some plants and orchid pots for helping her with her Chinese visa, so they have been added to the mix. The honeysuckle is growing rapidly. The only bad news is that something ate the main stem of the passion fruit vine I had growing up my other post. Oh well, the root remains, and it has sprouted again.

Small orchid pots in front.

Tulla let me move a couple of pots from the front yard. They are on the extreme left. The pots themselves are very old, dating back to Tulla's mother. You don't find ones like that anymore.

The living room furniture is finally recovered with the leather I bought. It seems that everything takes a full gestation period to accomplish here, so after 9 months of searching for someone who could do it, it is finally done.

Looking good and cat proof too.

Had to reorganize the china cabinet again as the ants invaded.

I had to reorganize my office as well since termites are eating anything made of paper or wood. I had to throw out some old photos, but luckily I could scan them into the computer, so they are not lost.

Same for the shelving unit in my office. Here is was not ants, but termites.

On the photo scanning front, I had scanned all my photos into my computer before leaving Canada. When I got to Sri Lanka, I dropped my laptop and the hard drive was damaged. At that time, it was not possible to recover the data from the hard drive, but I saved it anyway. Now, my computer guy has recovered all the photos from that hard drive. It was wonderful to have them back and quite a walk down memory lane as I sorted through them.

Thanks to the monsoon rains and now the sunny weather, everything is in bloom.

Veenitha standing in front of some lovely flowers. The bush right above her head has tiny white flowers that emit the most glorious scent.

The view through the car port from Tulla's veranda.

Flamevine just outside our carport in full bloom.

The mild weather is also a good time to do some pruning. Our clove tree has really been suffering, so finally this week, Tulla got the gardener from the neighbor's house below us to come and prune it.

As usual, there is no safety gear of any kind. Just jump up into the tree and start chopping.

The walk to and from the pool is wonderful these days with so many flowers being in bloom. Plus the paddy field is in its second planting.

Bougainvillia

Chinese honeysuckle or Rangoon creeper growing in the lovely garden of the Gunnesekara's just down my street. There is always something lovely to see when I walk past their place.

Not only the flowers are blooming, but the birds and bees are busy also.

Sunbirds have built their nest in the verbena.

Much to my surprise, we have yet another thing in our garden that is edible. Tree sorrel or bilimbi. We picked a bunch that grows on the trunk of the tree rather than the branches and made a pickle from it.

The fruit

The pickle.

And lastly, it is bread fruit season, so thanks to our Jamaican friends we made 3 pans of breadfruit pudding leaving the house smelling of cinnamon, nutmeg, wine and rum. Mmmmmmmm...!

Judith, Deanne and I are off to Anuradhapura this week for three days. Good time to travel outside of Kandy as there are so few tourists so hotels are offering amazing deals and it is Perahera starting tomorrow, so Kandy will be a zoo for 10 days. Looking forward to it.

Closing with my lovely babies.