Friday morning. Backfill the trenches we’d cut for the hot water pipe — soil, conduit sleeve, coconut fibre packed in for drainage. The fibre was my idea. The garden looks like a garden again.

Closing the trenches by hand in the red earth

Coconut fibre packed in for drainage

Saturday was Catherine’s 65th. We’ve known her since before Léon was born. A BBQ in the A-frame, everyone pitched in — what we’d brought back from the Schoelcher compost, three bowls of guavas and mangoes picked that morning, the table dragged out under the gable.

The harvest — guavas and mangoes from the Schoelcher compost

Anaïs and Léon at the fruit platter

I left mid-afternoon for a flag football match with the Iguanes. Got back at dusk. People were still there.

One more weekend, one more thing closed.