At the Caribbean Botanic conference we met so many wonderful people plus many botanist whose specialty was medicinal plants. One of the many people was a botanist from St. Lucia who now resides in Alberta. The conference now over, with some days to spare and his wealth of information especially on medicinal plants our St. Lucian decide to spend some time with us. As we reached our land, he quickly started identifying different plants and flowers as we got out of the truck. Marlene, Tara and I learned things about plants that we knew nothing about and new herbal uses for medicinal plants. We walked through the fruit trees that we’ve planted and got some good encouragement and herbal ways to deal with the plant pests. I feel my brain now has so much knowledge about plants that I need to use the information. After all that brainwork we went for a walk to the creek near the back of our land. It was sad to discover much of the water had been dammed by the owners of the neighboring land to make a pool for swimming. I miss the flowing of the water to the big river. I am not sure what I will do about the dam. It has been a long time since we took the time to go down the back and now realize we need to check the land and waterways regularly. Our St. Lucian friend found a little mango tree by the side of the pool that he lovingly transplanted to our land. In the planting process he did a major ritual, which included prayers and ritual watering.
Marlene, our friend and I went out to a South Indian restaurant for dinner. We sat on the covered patio as the rain poured eating, drinking and talking about how blessed we are. After dinner he presented us with around thirty red cedar seedlings for our land, which we planted this morning in the warm rain. Many Blessings to all.