Porcupine
There is one type of porcupine that lives in our area. It is a small creature, that is supposedly pretty tame, but will show its quills when threatened. (the images of the porcupine are from the internet and are not of the actual one on our farm)

Our dogs have tried eating or playing, not sure which one, with the local porcupine. It appears that it did not go well, since both dogs came running home with quills in their paws and around their mouths. Alas, I do not think there will be a friendship between the porcupine and the puppies.

Garbage
I think our garbage issues are finally under control. It has been about week since Rick installed a top on the bin. The area is pretty clean now, there are still people that walk by and throw trash near the bin and not in it, but it is nothing like it was before. Counting this as a win!

The Coffee Can
Our guest house now has an outdoor kitchen and sitting area. However, we are still waiting on another box of tile to finish the back-splash and counter-top over the dishwasher. The area turned out really nice and comfortable. :)

This week, we are working on building another shed/storage area and then we will begin the solar drying racks for the coffee. Right now, we use solar drying racks for the coffee that comes off of leased coffee trees, but have a big processing plant take care of the rest. This year, we are ready to take on the processing of all of our trees, or so we think.... :) More to come on that project!

Update on Work
We have cleaned out the water ditches in preparation for the rainy season, which included mulching a ton of leaves and branches.

Now we are finishing up the outdoor kitchen in front of the Coffee Can. They are tiling the counter-tops today and we just realized that the box of tile that just came in has a few broken tiles. We will now have to go order another box and wait the 10 days for it to arrive. But we can get the some of it up today. Right now the area has been full of mortar, dust, tools....quite messy!

The roof over the new kitchen and the Coffee Can was painted and sealed up ready for the rain to start. The processed coffee from this last harvest is now stowed and in big sacks. The new shelves for the Coffee Store have been started and just need to be mounted to the walls and holes in the yard that the dogs have created are all filled in! Every day there is something! :)

Bugs and the white moth
​We have a few bugs to look at. The 1st is some kind of beetle that was suntanning on our porch. The bug in the 2nd picture has a spot on his back that looks like a thumbprint. The 3rd and 4th picture are of a green mouth cricket looking  bug and the 5th is a fluffy white moth.

Everything is in bloom!
The jungle has flowers growing all over, the coffee is in full bloom and the fruit is growing on the trees. It is just so colorful and beautiful.

Update on our Trash Bin
I was so happy about how clean I made the trash bin in the last post. But sadly, my efforts did not even last 24 hours. However, I caught the culprit of the messes in the act! ​Hector, Simon and Rick got the dog out of the bin and cleaned it up again, but that only lasted another day. Today my husband is going to make a lid for the bin. We will win this war with garbage!  :)

Hector's Wall
Just a quick update on Hector's rock wall....there were a few small earthquakes in Costa Rica that trembled our grounds. I am sure we will see him out  there again fixing it. :)

Rain
After 3 months of no rain, our farm got a good nice shower today! I am not excited for the rainy season, but I am excited for the plants to get some water. The rest of the coffee trees should start blooming now and we can see what kind of harvest we will have this year.  :)

I also have some seedlings that can get planted outside now.....yay!!!!!

Trash
A year ago we placed a garbage bin at the bottom of the hill. The first picture is all of the trash that was thrown into the bin without a garbage bag, or garbage from bags that ripped open due to animals. Trash collectors here manually pull out garbage bags, the trucks do not lift up the bin and dump the garbage out into a truck. So....today I took 2 large garbage bags down and bagged all the extra trash up. So disgusting, but thankfully it is cleaned up and won't need to be done for another year!!!!

Update from Easter Egg Hunt
We could not hide real eggs around the farm for my son to find on Easter because the dogs would have eaten them all. So we hid paper eggs all over and some of them had a money value. We told my son he should ask the dogs to help him find all of the paper eggs, but he was pretty sure that they would not be helpful. haha   :)

Bug
This bug was on the hood of my car. I think the Scarabs are due to start coming out again soon....so not looking forward to those again.

April's Fool
​Pranks between my son and my husband have been a favorite for a number of years now. As my son gets older, the pranks are getting better.

It started with tape over the faucet, so when Rick turned on the sink in the bathroom, water would aim straight at him. This has been a yearly favorite.

Next came the phone alarm prank. My husband is outside re-starting his phone. I asked what he was doing and he explains that his phone has been glitching all morning. The alarm keeps going off. I asked him if he had talked to his son about that problem yet and I could see his brain working really hard to figure out if the boy really could have done that. After laughing and figuring out what alarm app kept activating, he went straight to our son's room...haha

Rick went out to the flea market today, which gave the boy and I time to plan the next one. We used some food dye and flour to make some fake blood. Rick comes home and our son is on the couch, we have the med kit out......
As a former paramedic, we were not sure if he would notice it was fake right away or not. We did not let him panic more than a few seconds before we gave it away though. :)

Retaliation has already started and this might be a very long day!

Easter Eggs
The town we live in does not have Easter egg decorating supplies. The larger city does, but we did not go to the larger city last week and I was frantically searching every store in Boquete for something to use to dye eggs. It turns out that the only food coloring the grocery stores carry is yellow and black. I had never even seen black before, although I am not a frequent food dye shopper.

After jokes of bumble bee eggs, school bus eggs and taxi looking eggs, I went searching for dye again. I finally found a small convenience store with 2 boxes of dye. Yay!!!!

We spent last night coloring eggs and yes some of them are a dark charcoal grey (they never turned a true black.) :) Rick could not wait and started before the kids!

Outdoor Kitchen
Rick and Mat finished putting up some hammocks and have started on the outdoor kitchen. Melvin was here to help with the stucco and counter-tops. I am thinking the kitchen will be done within the next 2 weeks. I will post pictures when it is done.

Sorry, no bug pictures this time. I am getting lazy on the bug hunting.:)