St. John, USVI, Part II

We've been to St. John three times now and have yet to see anything but the Northernmost part of the island. There is plenty to satisfy there, and it is a stunningly beautiful location. One of the places we like to visit is the old sugar mill ruins at Annaberg. There are ruins all over the island (and loads of incredible tales about each), but these are in particularly good condition. Here is the old windmill:

The buildings are really neat – an aggregate of local stone, locally-made clay bricks, and corals from the sea. There's a small garden as well. The gardener was onsite when we visited and he gave us a slice of sugar cane to chew. It’s sugar, but ... not. Lovely tasty stuff!

Here’s a frangipani caterpillar – about a hand-span in length! I know it looks upside-down but that's the way he was; I tried rotating the pic and he looked silly.

And here are the actual frangipani blossoms. SO hard to get a decent shot, there were few left and it was very breezy!

Here’s a brain coral on the beach:

And here are some of my maybe-one-day-I’ll-do-a-landscape-quilt inspiration shots:

It's funny how quilting takes over one's mind: when we went to St. John last time I was not yet a quilter but this time I saw inspiration in most everything I viewed - in bricks and buildings, beetles, flowers, the coral gardens ... OK, maybe not in the giant millipedes, but in just abut everything else!