It has been way too long since I have posted here. It is now January of 2013 and I have been living in Guatemala for 6 years and 4 months, in San Pedro la Laguna for nearly five years. And I have finally bit the bullet - buying a piece of property and subsequently starting a house. I asked myself sometime last year (since I'm now 77 years old) What do I want to do with the rest of my life?? Since I've been a gardener, homesteader or farmer since 1966 (part of the Back to the Land movement at that time)the answer came pretty quickly: I want to build something, I want to create in and with the earth. So with some sadness and trepidation I took the money that was intended for my old age and then my children's inheritance, and plunked it down - probably paying too much for 1/4 Acre (nearly $22,000) but hopefully my house - which is colonial style and should be beautiful when finished - will come in about the same. NOT bad, all told. But money isn't the point: the point is to live in a place I love for my coming years, and slowly (maybe really slowly) landscape it into a place of function and beauty. My concept is Edible Landscaping. I want most of the garden to be terraces (since it's on a slope) of fruits, veggies and herbs. This will be easier because you can garden year-round. There should be few dry or dead spots at any time of year, but of course the challenge will be making all of it look and smell wonderful. Following my friend Huck Rorick's example, I want the path to the house lined with herbs....lavendar, rosemary, mint, etc. All plants that smell good. That smell of life and the earth. There will be a lot of sun in front of the house and a lot in one part of the upper garden...so those will be planted with the sun and warmth-lovers...strawberries along the edge of the patio, (the someday-stone-patio) zucchini and tomatoes up in the sunniest spot (they are prone to mildew in the humidity of this lake area.) That's the dream. I go up to the property from the place I'm staying til it's done and just sit or stand around. I just like being there. Meanwhile the project Ayudame a Pintar Mi Futuro continues to grow. We've been working on our communal garden, thanks to money from the Marigold Ideas for Good foundation; we are thus employing some of our day-worker fathers and their older sons to do the heavy rock-moving, stump-removing, fence-building hard work of terracing and putting in a fence and water system. Then the families who are truly interested will divide up the plots and use our provided seed to start their gardens. After this, their work will be done voluntarily and the group will decide how to divide and perhaps market the proceeds. I am interested in better nutrition for the families, and insistent about doing this organically, but the parents (after a visit to the local permaculture farm with my friend Lynn Renn from Sebastopol) are getting on board with that. They are definitely excited to have plots of their own. Our Saturday classes continue, now with some 32 kids in attendance each week, and the moms will get a basket of food again this month. Thanks to donations via indiegogo.com, we were able to pay for the school expenses of our five older kids who take private classes beyond the Saturday group class. We helped with this, this year, because we recognized how hard it is for poor kids to afford the fees in the equivalent, here, of junior high and high school. We lost one good painter to the lure of work for cash, instead of school, and became aware of the danger. our