A few weeks before I left for Samoa, I was dragged by a friend of mine to a Toastmasters meeting in Santa Cruz, CA. I'm not a big fan of public speaking, but Karen had been raving about Toastmasters for months now and I was curious to see what it was all about.

There were speeches, of course, and announcements. There was a word for the day that the speakers were supposed to incorporate in their talks (I can't remember the word), and encouragement to all the guests (there were two others besides myself) to join up. Then there was the spontaneous speeches, where people were called up from the audience to talk for a few minutes about something, anything really.

I was called on, and having no clue what to talk about, I crapped on about my plans to build a spice garden at my house in Samoa where I will be serving as a Peace Corps volunteer. The speech went over well, I think. I didn't win the contest for best spontaneous speech, and I might have finished first in the number of "um's" and "uh's" (they actually have some guy counting), but people seemed to like what I had to say, even laughed a few times.

That was over a year ago. Yesterday I finally planted the seeds. I've been putting it off for various reasons, not the least of which is that I've been trying to move and have been told that I'm moving off and on for 10 months since the first night in my house when I was attacked by my neighbor's 3 dogs and bitten badly by one of them.

I've had been saving egg cartons for the purpose of the starting the seeds indoors. I went outside with the cartons and gathered soil from the same place I fill the litter box I planted rosemary, oregano, spring onions, cilantro, basil, and serrano chillies. They should grow like wild fire here.

The soil in Samoa has be amongst the richest in the world and the climate is so conducive to growing. Just to give you one example, There's a papaya tree growing out from the side of my house that wasn't there when I moved in. I don't think it was there in April. But now it has a trunk that is probably 8 inches in diameter at the base and is weighed down under the massive weight of dozens of green papayas.

I've never really done any kind of gardening before. The way I figure it is, if I can't grow something here in Samoa with its unbelievably favorable conditions, I'm never going to be able to grow anything anywhere, so this is a big test of my erstwhile green thumb.