Name That Casa

Buenos dias. We got over two inches of rain last night. Quite a grand storm, lots of trelampagosa, lightning and truenos, thunder, right over our bedroom. It lasted for hours and hours.

Poor Cookies got caught out in it and during one brief lull, I was able to coax him inside, but before I could dry him off, he jumped up onto one of the beautiful yellow Pier One cushioned chairs, well, you can only imagine what that looks like now.

The good news is we used several very thick towels at the doorway and as a result we did not have any pinacates, the stinky, black beetle type bugs, in bed with us last night.

Even with all that racket through out the night, I slept well and was out on the street at five-thirty.
All of the arroyos are running. Here is La Aduana below. If you recall, during the last big storm the Chalaton and Escondida arroyos were running, but the Aduana was not. There was evidently enough water last night to kick the Aduana into high gear.These guys below just did not want the hassle of going up and over the bridge. Yet for the longest time they could not commit, bridge? water? bridge? water? Finally the one in the plaid shirt just walked through and the water was up to his knees. The other one shook his head, laughed and took the bridge. Almost all of the vehicles did not skip a beat and just plunged ahead.The dozer kept shoveling dirt into the arroyo, for what purpose I am not sure.

Here along the left bank, in the photo below, the city is building a tall stone wall and a lighted malecon that will go for quite some distance along the arroyo. It will be nice walking when there is water in the arroyo. I keep hoping they might find a river to divert. When the water is gone, I will go over and take a photo of what the finished malecon will look like. There is a construction board near the workers showing an artist's rendition.

My purpose for going out this morning was to get a few more photos of some of the lovely wall plaques around town. Many of these plaques just show the street address of the casa, but quite a few of the creative ones tell the name the owners have chosen for their casa.

Now I tried several years ago to convince Senor we should name our casa. We had a little turtle in the stable at that time. I suggested La Tortuga, House of the Turtle............no, he said..................Casa de los Quatros Vientos, House of the Four Winds, because we are one of the windiest spots in town.................absolutely not, he said.....................Casa de Las Campanas, House of the Bells, because we have so many dollar store wind chimes....................NO, he said.................Casa de los Limones, House of the Limes, three lime trees......how about Casa de Construccion, no need to say more about that.............no, he said, we don't need to name our house, we know what it is called, it is called our house..................Okay, I just let that go. No big deal, we do not need to name our casa.

Below are some of my favorite plaques, some I like because the name is pretty, others because they are more creative in style and even others because of where the owner chose to place the plaque.

House of the Tangerine or Mandarin Orange......................

The Beautiful House.....................

Robert's House.................

House of the Fourteen Little Angels......................

The Lovely House........................


I believe this is the House of the 'family name'.................

The Chocolate House........................

The Hummingbird House..................

The House of another family name.....................

And the House of Sucess or Victory.................

Imagine our surprise just a few days ago when we returned home to find that the telephone pole outside our gate had been named.................9.............and below it Humberto (I now know I have been misspelling Umberto's name).................next to the large H in smaller letters is umberto. So we are Durango 9, House of Humberto.....................jajajaja...............trust me, Senor is a funny guy but he found absolutely no humor in that at all. I am surprised he has not been at that already with a can of black paint.

No, I am not bored! I really thought you might like to see the wall plaques.

All right I am fixing to go and make crab cakes. Did I tell you the fish lady came by with bags of fresh crab? OMG, unbelievable, a kilogram for under fifty pesos. That is two and a half pounds for a little over four USD and it is all cleaned and perfectly good2go.

Then I am going to the bike shop. The gear shifter contraption thingy on the right handle bar fell completely off new old bike this morning. Plop, just like that in the street in front of the Palacio. The guard was not there to see it, thank goodness no one was there to see it. I got off and picked it up and threw it in the basket.

It will be my last visit to this bike shop. A friend sent me a link to fixing it all myself. He said I would probably need to read it through a couple of times. Well, after reading it for the 5th time, I said to myself........there is no way in heck i can do that............... but Senor can, he can do anything............except name a casa................gee whiz..............


Below is a very early in the morning photo of the church steeple, the fresh water covered streets and the green hillside beyond, very picturesque morning. Not many folks out and about, but the street workers were everywhere, sweeping up dirt and garbage that came with the rain. The vendors were wiping down chairs and putting up their tarps. The sweet smell of pastries cooking was on the air. Someone was whistling over here and someone singing over there, very nice. Que tengas buen dia! linda lou

Dia de Independencia

Hola, buenas tardes,

The night of the Palacio festivities we drove through the Plaza, and in the Palacio we could see the chairs were set up for the inauguration of the new mayor. The Plaza was very festive and alot of people were sitting and talking, children were playing, vendors were selling and the dessert ladies had out long tables of Tres Leche Cakes (three milk cakes).

A few blocks from the Palacio several women sell tamales from their casa, so once we got home we turned around and walked back to buy tamales and empanadas.

On the walk home, we got involved in a street soccer game, playing well into the dark with about ten young boys. Senor hit a tope and the tamales went flying, but he quickly saved them and proceeded to score a goal and skin his knee at the same time. The boys whooped and hollered and did not seem to mind a bit that we had joined their game. When we decided our legs could not take anymore we called hasta luego and gracias and many more than ten boys' voices called goodbye to us. We looked up to a high stone wall to see that we had drawn a crowd......

Back home we devised this plan to stay up until midnight to hear the 'grito', but that didn't work. At midnight when the first fireworks went off, Senor shot out of bed thinking a gun was going off. As soon as he realized those were fireworks, he said.............oh, yea, the fireworks, we should go and watch.............and went back to sleep. I watched outside from the garden room. The fireworks were brief, but I could hear alot of screaming and yelling from town, so I imagine everyone had a very good time.

We were up early to go to the parade and below are some photos from Dia de Independencia. The parade here in Alamos begins with all the children from the entire municipality of Alamos, carrying their school flag and the Mexican flag, wearing their school uniform and marching to a cadence through all of the streets of the historical district. There are many, many schools and they all wear different colored uniforms. The pictures below are only representative of a few schools.

Some of the schools will have drummers, usually girls, and coronet players, usually the boys.


Below, the secondary schools are marching. The teachers march along with the students, calling out the cadence for them. The hill top ahead is the Mirador. They will soon turn left and head toward the Plaza de Armas.

After the schools go by, the famous little red train, pulling the younger children, goes by. Their school flag is the red banner on the train.

Then come several bands.And, then comes the newly elected PAN mayor and his family. Behind them are all of the municipality employees that will begin working for the new government administration.Then come the horses.
Once the parade has gone through the historic district and around the Plaza, it goes to the Alameda and back to the Plaza where the horse dancing begins.

After the dancing, the mayor and his family began walking up Calle Juarez for the third time and all of the horses and horse dancers took off behind them, dancing to the Mariachi band.

The musicians below headed toward the arroyo and Senor and I headed toward the little Sonoran hot dog stand at the Alameda. After we ate, we went to the arroyo where the Tecate stands were already open and men were already waiting in line.

Yesterday, we had big plans for the afternoon............maybe watch a little baseball, some soccer, the horse dancing competitions, eat a little carne asada, but it was just too hot for us. I think it was one of the hottest days we have had all summer and there was absolutely no breeze. I am one of those people who hates to miss anything. If something is going on, I want to be there to see it, but we did not see anything else........by one o'clock we were walking home................. turned on the mini split, and slept the afternoon away..................