Sunday in the Garden with Fletchers

Sunday was bright and sunny....just the weather we needed to walk through the Jardin Botanico. The garden was started a couple of hundred years ago to acclimatize plants brought back from explorers traveling the world. The idea was to acclimatize them so they could then be transferred to Madrid. The only problem was that Madrid did not have the proper climate for these plants to live. So they stayed here in Tenerife.

The cyclone Xynthia that hit the island on February 27 did quite a bit of damage to the garden and it had been closed for several days last week. There was evidence of freshly pruned plants, shrubs and trees. It is amazing that more damage wasn't done as some of the winds were up to 120 km while the average was 93km.

This is a bust of the man who designed the garden. Not sure if those were his helpers in the background.

We came across an article about the storm in the Tenerife News newspaper which is published every 2 weeks or so. Being in English we found out how much damage Xynthis caused. We knew it had smashed most of the planters outside of the Hotel Monopol, and Sue was awakened by the sound of roof tiles smashing to the street outside her window. This was the 4th huge storm to hit the islands this winter. Millions of euroes of damage was done all over the island. Many families were without power, a crane was blown over onto several houses, and miraculously no one was killed.

The day the wind died down we regained TV reception for CNN in English. We figured the wind must have reset the dish so it could receive the signal again!

I forgot to include this video on the last blog entry. This was the Saturday evening entertainment in the Hotel Monopol lobby area. Deb and I stayed to hear a couple of songs. They were really good!

One of the aspects we really like about being here is there is a variety of live music being played on the streets and in the bars on most evenings. Often we can sit on our terrace and hear the accoustical guitar being played down the street. Life is good!