But today I made an effort to find the nice things to say, and I took some photos of the beauty around me.
These are photos from around my garden. These beautiful things just grow with no effort or thought on my part. They exist with no thought on my part. It's about time I gave these lovely things more thought.
Red ginger is called teuila. I think that's a beautiful name. I try to keep a bouquet of these in my house regularly.
The shadows made the leaves look like they had bubbles and bulges, but it's just light.
We actually have a lot more papaya trees than I knew about. We'll have to be sure to harvest them before the bats do.
This massive leaf is about 4 feet long and 3 feet wide. I'd never noticed the patterns of the veins.
A tropical conifer.
Narelle planted these a few years ago. Wish she were here to see them!
This is white ginger. Its smell is what made me want to live in this house.
One kind of Heliconia (Heliconia griggsiana)
Looking toward our house from the bottom of the yard.
So this is our home. It's what we know and we're used to. It is very tricky living on a tropical island for a thousand reasons. But at this point, if I moved back to "normal" life, I think I would feel more unfamiliar and uncomfortable than relieved. And we might not have all these lovely blessings right in our backyard, so I have to be grateful and content.
P. S. You may notice the veiny lines spreading across this picture. We believe it's mold growing in our camera. there's no way to clean it off, but we're trying to dry out the camera (rice in socks, sit it in the warm oven, etc.) Just another joy of living in the tropics!
