Word from Fernando and updated garden picture

Last Tuesday, Fernando wrote us and this is part of what he had to say:

.... everything went well with my flights and stuff. We
stayed in Accra on the first night, then went out to Cape Coast, which
is a city about 3 hours west of Accra. We're staying here again
tonight, and tomorrow we head north to Kumasi and then maybe to the
field site. Today we went to a small town called Elmina, which has the
oldest European building in Africa -- a huge castle / fort that was
built by the Portuguese and taken over by the Dutch and later the
British. It was mostly used for the slave trade, so it's full of
dungeons and stuff. The place we're staying is not exactly in Cape
Coast, it's about 10 km north on the road to Kakum National Park,
where we're going tomorrow. The hotel here is nice.. there's a large
artificial lake with crocodiles and also lots of birds. I can't ID
them, but we've seen 3 kinds of kingfishers, some cormorants and
herons, tons of weavers, and various other little ones......

They only do internet on Tuesdays there, so if we're lucky we'll hear from him most Tuesdays. They have a lot of business to take care of on Tuesdays, so we'll take whatever we get.

Guillermo has been working diligently in his garden and he's gotten it back in good shape. He cut down all the winter rye, mixing it into the soil in some places and letting it lie where it fell in other places.


This is a view of the entire garden. In the background, you can see the greenhouse, which Guillmero just yesterday finished taking all the plastic off of the sides. It is now just a shell, waiting for winter again. In front of the greenhouse shell are his tomato plants, covered with green cloth. In the foreground, you can see some little cantaloupe plants just coming up. Further to the left, and not visible in the picture are tiny watermelon plants coming up. His garden looks much better than it did in those April pictures, doesn't it??

A picture of Vicki standing in front of a White-Thorned Acacia. While walking the U of A campus back in 2001, Guillermo picked up a seed pod. He grew the seed in a little pot and planted the seedling in our field. As you can see, the tree is actually a beautiful tree here. Rebeca says they usually grow more like bushes. Guillermo really keeps after that tree, to make sure it doesn't ever think it's going to be a bush again!!