Hi Laurel,
Thanks, it was a great trip although somewhat different than I expected, which is one of the reasons to travel of course. I should have explained though that I left from Arizona not St. John's. We have been spending the winter here to escape the rigors of it in Newfoundland. My employer is gracious enough to let me work from here. If you're interested I'll recount two of our experiences.
My wife and I spent 7 days on Hawaii (also known as "the big island") and, aside from volcanoes and a bit of snorkeling, much of the time was spent admiring the vegetation. In the tropical rain forest on the east side of the island everything seems to grow effortlessly. We stayed the first four nights on the west side in a beautiful place run by two classical pianists and expert gardeners from Switzerland and Austria. One evening while dining on the lanai enjoying the growing tropical darkness we were treated to a concert of Handel's chamber music beautifully rendered by Ursula and Roland on harpsichord and oboe. Then we drove to east side and spent 3 nights at a place run by a couple of nice hippies who washed up on the shores 25 years ago and never left. My wife asked them if they compost and they replied "Yes, just throw it on the ground anywhere. If the rats don't eat it, the stuff will just break down and disappear". They are provided with coconuts, avocados, mangoes, pineapples and bananas with no effort on their part.
They also have a flock of 21 ducks that just roam loose in the rain forest. They supplement their feed in the morning by cracking open some of the night's coconut drops with an axe. The first two mornings we watched as the ducks waddled after the female proprietor down to the cracking site in anticipation of the daily feed. On the last morning, my wife looked out the window at the now-familiar sound of the axe to see a shaggy-haired man swinging the axe completely "au naturel". Too funny.