St. John Fri. 3/9/12

No rain last night for a change. It was a lovely day today (as usual) - the wind has died down and the sun is bright! Dave and I started a new rock garden today. The Sierra Club from last week spent an afternoon helping around camp and pulled most of the snake plant from this garden so we dug for roots and rebuilt the stone wall. We are not quite done, but should finish in another session. Dave got stung by a wasp (they call them Jack Spaniels here) so I mixed up some baking soda and vinegar to put on it. They must have a nest nearby as we saw quite a few of them. We collected a few new "critters" for the students to look at - a grub as thick as Dave's thumb, a fairly large scorpion, another slave gecko, and a blind snake. At first we thought the snake was a legless lizard, but the scale pattern was wrong. I saw a hermit crab climbing a tree today. He went very slowly, but inched his way up - very persistent! We had fish tacos for lunch. I had never had one before - it was quite good. After lunch, Dave took a nap and I went for a snorkel and swim. The water was great, as usual, and I enjoyed being in the water after digging in the dirt all morning. Ital (the drummer) is coming tonight to put on a program for the kids. Charlie, Pete, and Zoe went scuba diving this afternoon out from Cabrit Point. Charlie said they had a very good dive. He has a wonderful underwater camera and is putting some of his pictures on the computer in the camp office. I will have to see if I can figure out how to download some of them - you will be amazed! The kids from Radford are still working on their projects. They are really a very nice group of kids - very polite and appreciative of everything we do. We will miss them when they leave on Sunday. No pictures today - I was too busy to grab the camera - will try to do better tomorrow.