We bought our piece of land shortly after we arrived in Dominica in 2005, though didn’t build a house on it for several years afterwards. It lay fallow, home to tall grasses, trees, and pioneering and invasive plants such as miconia (calvescens, I think). The previous owner hadn’t done much with it, other than allow local farmers to grow vegetables there. Before that, our half acre used to be part of a much larger estate owned by a branch of the Shillingford family. According to his lovely widow, Mr Shillingford grew a range of crops there and our little corner was known as Orange Field – where he grew his oranges, of course. Tragically, all his crops and farm buildings were destroyed by Hurricane David in 1979. Mrs Shillingford said it broke her husband’s heart, and he never returned.

So, after meeting her, we decided we’d name our new home Orange Field and, shortly after we’d finished building our house, we bought and planted two Washington navel orange trees from the Ministry of Agriculture’s citrus regeneration project in the Botanic Gardens. They’ve been there for about ten years, and, to our huge disappointment, we’ve maybe had about five oranges from them in all that time.

But this morning, I was overjoyed to see both trees displaying lots of orange blossom and even some young oranges. So, I feel optimistic that maybe, just maybe, we’ll finally be able to honour Mr Shillingford’s Orange Field legacy.