I must apologize to the occasional reader of this blog for the apparent lack of attention. I apologize.

There.

Although I can't offer it as much of an excuse, a lot of time has been spent lately finishing my second novel "Whores--A Political Saga," available soon on Amazon/Kindle but I certainly should have made time along the way to tend to this.

I notice that almost a year has elapsed since the last post which was a report on the acquisition of our kitten "Scooter." Today, we are pleased to report that "Scooter" has thrived and is a healthy, full blown cat who seems to enjoy being a thorn in the side of our other two cats, "Mina" and "Flaco." Being the youngest, she feels that she has the right to be as obnoxious as she wants to be and all other beings, including Carol and I, just better learn to live with it.

Life continues at a blissful pace here in this lovely old town in the jungle. With April being the hottest month of the year, much time has been spent in the pool and liberal use has been made of the air conditioning.

We realize that we've failed in any of our previous postings to describe where we live. Accurately stated, it's merely a second floor, one-bedroom, one bath apartment made mostly out of concrete. But that doesn't come anywhere close to describing what it really is and hopefully, the pictures that we're gonna try to post with this article will give the reader a little better understanding of why we ain't goin' nowhere.

And we promise to produce material on a more timely basis from now on. It should be easy to tell the difference in who is writing what. Carol's will be very upbeat, full of flowers and happiness while mine will depressing as Hell. We're just that way.

Our living room. Notice that all of the windows are open to the elements. Birds and bats often fly through.

Looking from the living room toward the bar and the kitchen. The visible door leads to the bathroom, and the door barely visible leads to the bedroom.

From the north wall in the living room, looking south. The gap in the wall is the stairway that leads down to the garden, pavilion and pool.

Looking out the massive open window to the east, this is our view of the garden and the swimming pool.

The kitchen is small but it's got every thing we need. Many Nicaraguans are poor and cook over a wood fire but we've got a gas stove. Notice the mirror that makes up most of the wall.

This guy belongs to our next door neighbor. There are roosters (and, of course, the corresponding chickens) everywhere. They are not synchronized and will go off at any time, day or night.

At the bottom of our stairs before going out the gate to the garden, we have our own little private space which we rarely use. However, an occasional cat can often be spotted napping on the table.

This is the pathway that leads from our gate to the pool and pavilion. It's pretty easy to see the worn spot down the middle. It gets used a lot.

We're in the pool here just about every day. Granada is hot, even during the rainy season. The pool is about 40' by 15' and saltwater so we don't have to deal with chlorine that much.

Rocio, the daughter of our good friend Johanna Gonzalez, loves our pool. Johanna runs her own English school where Carol teaches in exchange for Spanish lessons from Johanna.

Across the path from the pool is the pavilion. Party central. The winding stairway on the left leads to the observation platform up top for stargazing and meteor showers. The pavilion has running water, a refrigerator, plus cable and internet connections.

There's plenty of seating in the pavilion. We use it often whenever we have company over for dinner. It even has ceiling fans.

There are all kinds of fruits and flowers growing in the garden. This stalk of bananas was so heavy that a pole had to be put under them to hold them up off the ground.

Another stalk of bananas. We've also got two avocado trees, a coconut tree, a lemon tree and a tree that grows this brown thing called mamey sapote, kind of a cross between a carrot and a peach, a guanabana tree, or to North Americans, sour sop. Lots of flowers and ferns, too.

All kinds of flowers, to many to post, including one live orchid that we added to the collection shortly after we moved here. Bought it for $7. It now hangs on a palm tree and blooms at Christmas.

 According to Carol, these are hibiscus flowers. They're sometimes red, sometimes yellow and sometimes pink. You just never know what color they're gonna be on any given day.

This is a Nicaraguan squirrel. They look a little like a skunk in reverse, white with a dark stripe down its back. They drive out cats nuts but, so far, there have been no violent encounters.

And finally, this is the view we have most sunsets. And people wonder why we haven't gone back to the States in almost five years. Nothing like this in Tennessee.