It's late afternoon. I'm sitting with LittleOne on the stairs to the back deck, looking out at the garden, the sky, the world. Indi-girl, our beloved pupper, lies in the grass, relaxed and watchful in the way of all doggies the world over. The sun has dipped low behind the trees; our western horizon is stained light gold and the tall shrubs on the neighbour's side of the fence are a lattice silhouette of stems and leaves. Above our heads, the sky has gone that colourless grey-white shade, while in the east, the same sky-ceiling is exhaling into a light lilac. Directly in front of us, at the bottom of the garden, the poinciana tree (which, for years, I only knew by their local Mauritian name of Flamboyant trees) holds above its head a mix of fragile-thin twig and strong branches, tiny light-green leaves clustered together in fern-like fingers, and big, long, sometimes-wavy seed pods which are longer and fatter than a ruler. It is a canopy which sits above its smooth trunk