17th February

Heavy rain all night, it woke me a few times, with the result I slept in till 7am. Then found out there had been a power cut during the night, and I had no water. I managed to get enough out of the rainwater tank outside for a coffee, well, 3 coffees, then put the remainder in the fridge for iced coffee later in the day. Persisted with the water system, and finally got it running about 8am, had a quick shower and joined the stock car derby to work.

I realised this morning what it looks like driving along Mendana Ave. When the V8 supercar races are on, and the drivers have the warm up lap, and they’re weaving across the track warming up the tyres, that is what Mendana Ave looks like, except you have 4 lanes of traffic, 2 lanes in each direction. At the ANZ roundaroundabout at this end of Honiara, there is a 2 lane bridge, one lane each direction, but no one slows down. Who ever is in front going onto the bridge has right of way, and being in front can be by as much as a thin cigarette paper. Add in the bus stop just before the bridge, at least 6 mini buses stopping and pulling out, it makes for an interesting drive.

I walked all the tracks in the gardens today, down to the old British Hanging site at one end by Rove Prison, up past the top bridge, the two ridge tracks and the valley & ridge loop. A lot of palms, rainforest canopy, butterflies, and what I think is a type of humming bird. It was too high up to see clearly, but only a couple of inches in size, wings beating furiously as it feed off some orchid flowers in the canopy
If you have google earth installed, and look for Honiara, the Botanic Gardens are to the left of the town, look for an X shaped white structure, that is Rove Prison, the Gardens are the forested area going south of the prison.

I’ll have to find some info on the birds and butterflies here, some of the butterflies are Monarch size, from brown to deep blue, speckled and mottled colours.

The rains have washed a lot of debris down over some of the tracks, especially the ones cutting down the ridges, another job for the clean up crew.

Our tree felling exercise yesterday ended abruptly, hem chainsaw, hem bugarup. So it’s away to be repaired, again.

Found another Metroxylon that had seeded, and the seeds have fallen and started sprouting around the base. I’ll collect the seedlings later and transplant them into planter bags.

My class starts next week, 12 people doing level 2 Horticulture certificate. Classroom stuff for the morning, then we can do anything related to the course for the afternoon. One of the units is Amenity structures for Parks and Gardens, so we’ll be playing with dam building in the swimming hole for a day or so, Eric told me he built 3 dams there over the 2 years he was here, and the next person built one. The floods make it a never ending task, but it’s 30*C, sunshine, and what could be better than playing in the stream. No need to make suggestions either thank you

I finally found the Bulk Bin Food Store this afternoon. It’s tucked away behind the Govt Offices, in a dirt sidestreet, nearly everything I wanted, flour(wholemeal and plain,)/curry/red and yellow split lentils, bread improver, eggs, (at $30 for 10) spices, herbs, rice. Dinner for tonight was mango/lentil/onion/chilli curry with rice and pappadoms. I’ve had a few discussions with the gas stove here. 3 of the top burners work, the grill didn’t and the oven has to be lit with a bit of paper, which is ok, at least it works. I was giving it all a good workout again tonight to try to get all 4 burners working, and the grill. Naturally, I forgot to turn the grill off when I gave up, and started cooking on the top burners. Well, it wasn’t working, so it shouldn’t have mattered. After about 10 minutes, there was a loud WHOOOOOMPF, and now the grill works and so do all 4 burners on top. I managed to get the grill door back on without too much trouble.

I mentioned David earlier, in hospital to have his elbow operated on, He dislocated it last year, popped it back in himself. He’d managed to get a couple of muscles tangled with the tendons in his elbow. Luckily he hasn’t done too much damage, The surgeon untangled everything, and apart from a fair bit of pain, he’s due out later this week. I don’t know if he’ll be able to work for a while though.

Gecko watch: 9.41pm, 2 small geckos, one in the kitchen, one in the bathroom. I think the slight gas explosion earlier may have upset a few

Pic for today is the swimming hole at the gardens, the floods last week washed away the bank and the retaining tyres, and the dam is the broken flat topped structure on the left of the pic.
Baebae luikum iu tomoro