Hello Friends,

Just a reminder that the House of Hope Drive is on until Saturday when I’ll be drawing a name for the prize. We’re currently up to $1, 130, which is crazy INCREDIBLE! Thanks so much for contributing!

My friend Celia, who lives in Dominica, is going to be visiting the House of Hope on December 21st. She is going to bring the total donation number to them and take a few pictures to send back to us.

I don’t know what the weather is like where you are, but I could use a little colour right now. I took this photo last year while visiting the gardens of two of the women responsible for the House of Hope.

A few more pictures after the jump….

Unfortunately, I did not have a wide angle lens on this part of the trip. It’s a long story, but the short version is that I was unable to take photos that properly capture this garden visit. It was incredible. The houses we visited backed each other’s yards, and all of the yards were in full use like mini farms. There were small orchards of every tropical fruit you can imagine, chickens, rabbits, sugar cane, roselle, flowers, and raised beds full of herbs and greens. It had the feeling of a really large community garden, only the members have big yards, rather than small plots. There was a spirit of collaboration and knowledge sharing that was really inspiring to experience.

I wanted to stay forever.

Raised beds in Joan’s garden.

Tiny pomegranates.

Harvesting a few stalks of sugar cane with a cutlass (this is the word for machete used in Dominica). That sugar cane was incredible!

Davin and Joan. The women sent us back with so much food! Grapefruits, oranges, a huge piece of cinnamon, sugar cane, freshly dug turmeric…. I haven’t met a gardener yet who wasn’t super generous with their bounty. We were leaving in 2 days and couldn’t eat it all so we passed the remainder onto the people who moved in next door the night before we left for St. Lucia.

View of the mountains from the garden.