We're in a one-bedroom apartment now with three kids, but it has electricity (inverter and batteries). The owner also keeps a custodian here, and he is teaching us a lot. All-in-all the space trade is really worth it.

We've learned about double-dug gardens, protecting seedlings from chickens and sun (with palm branches), planting pineapples, plantains, and bananas, drying seeds, guerilla gardening, how to know which young papaya trees will produce and which to cut down, what a breadfruit is and how to eat it, and the list goes on.

We brought our worm bin and pollywogs with us from our old place across town. The worms are sure slow on the uptake. We've had them for months now, and they don't seem to be multiplying. How long does it take? I don't disturb them often - maybe once a month.

Our pollywogs have mostly grown legs and hopped off, but the boys are concerned that the chickens might have made a snack of the last couple. We dug a tiny "pond" for them, lined with a planter bottom and shaded it with a board against the afternoon sun. It's amazing to me how maintenance-free they seemed to be. Just make sure they have some of the slimy water you found them in, make sure it doesn't dry out, and they're good to go. What in the world are they eating? The kids sure loved to see them flitting around, and it was amazing, even for me to see as their legs began to grow. I had only ever seen it in pictures. Nothing beats real life.

We lost one chick shortly after our move - chicken fever? The locals say it hits at this time of the year when the wind picks up, and it is "cold." We had named her Cinnamon, for the color of her head fluff. Before we could dig a hole for her and say good-bye, the custodian came along and offered to take care of it . . . by throwing her over the wall! He said the dogs would take care of her :-( I guess that's life, the food chain. About a week later our son reported another languishing chicken, but I thought he was just getting over-reactive, so I waited.

That evening when we finally went to check on her (Star), sure enough, she didn't want to move. I felt around on her body and found a very squishy, swollen lump under her neck. We took her to the custodian, and he felt the lump and then squished it around and made her throw up all the goo that was in there. He said she must have eaten something bad. We thought she'd be good to go, but she was still trying to doze off, so he told us to run for a sour orange (a common Haitian remedy). By the time we got it to her, she was in convulsions, and we couldn't get her back. She was my favorite of the chicks :-(

That would be a really down-er note to end on. The rest of the chickens are healthy and growing. One we rescued from death by string (wrapped so tightly around his leg that it was cutting into him, and his leg was swelling painfully hot and huge around it). He kept wandering into our yard from no-one knows where and would just sit outside our chickens' pen like he wanted to be part of the family. When I finally clued into what was wrong with him I actually called our nurse-friend over to help me, because I was too squeamish to do it myself. I thought it might require amputation, but she persisted patiently until she had dug out every last piece of string and hair that was cutting into his leg. Now he walks like a soldier, but he's doing very well, and there is no more infection.

We are beginning to see who our real friends are here, because they share their seeds with us :-) When they are feeling extra generous, they share a strong, healthy tree seedling with us. We had seen no visible progress from our avocado seeds yet, and today Pastor Daniel gave us a beautiful avocado start! Yeah!