What a busy week we’ve had! Work-wise things are coming along. We finished clearing the area around the clinic last week, filling it with an abundance of grass plugs and making room for a shade house to be constructed by our trustworthy Abran and others. The house is going to be filled with our baby trees, which also began arriving these past few days from surrounding communities. The species include some good ol’ guarioba, quinilla, ana caspi, parinari, marimari, and who could forget the amiroba! We’ve packed these babies into some compost-filled bags, and are leaving them under a comfy palm at our station to prosper and maybe one day start some new families of their own (they grow up so fast!). We’ve also painstakingly dug out a canalita (trench) next to the shade house to ensure our arbolitas are protected from jungle monsoons. Aside from the laborious physical aspect of our work, several mornings of ours involved some intellectually stimulating plant research. Every couple of days we’ve shipped some folks off to visit our beautiful herbalist woman Doña Alicia, in order to gain some of her invaluable medicinal plant knowledge. She’s been telling us about the plants and trees she and her late-herbalist husband utilized to combat various ailments faced by members of Santo Tomas. Some of the common maladies include ear infections, fiebre, nausea, diarrhea and various wounds (machete induced?). She also gave us the scoop on a love-potion, which will be especially useful for some members of our team (Alec).