An Alamos Autumn Day

Buen dia. It is just a beautiful day here in Alamos. There is a strong breeze and the air is dry and smells like sweet jasmine. It is definitely an autumn day.

The Sierra de Alamos are filled with color as the tropical deciduous thorn forest begins to change. Some of the more prolific trees are the kapok, with its brilliant red and gold leaves, the yellow leaves of the elephant tree and the orange of the octillo. The hills are also home to oak and pine forests. As we get closer to the dry season, which usually begins mid to late October, most of these trees will lose their leaves, and the Sonoran Desert will take over with its enormous Etcho, a cactus similar to the saguaro, standing like soldiers against the brown hillsides.

Fall has always been my favorite season and it remains true, even in Mexico. We are waking up to sixty degree mornings and the air is cool and fresh, tinged with wood smoke. Days are still warming up into the nineties, but the humidity has dropped and the light has changed.

Clouds continue to billow, especially to the north and east, but we have not had rain in well over a week. With hurricane season lasting through November, it is posssible we will still get more rain, but hopefully all hurricanes will stay at bay.

The birds are out in big numbers today, enjoying the change in the weather. A hawk has been passing back and forth across the field next door. The cardinal family has been at the water dish most of the morning, leaving only to hide in a tecoma tree when the white winged dove swoop in for a visit. All of my wind chimes are tinkling merrily, swaying in the breeze alongside Senor's electrical tubing. Cookies is stretched out on the floor. Senor is stretched out on the bed.
It is just a very nice Alamos autumn day.

I Need Help with Blogger

Buenos tardes. A very cool and mysterious morning. Shrouded in fog, none of the mountains were visible. A little breeze for my walk and by the time I got back home at six thirty, I was highly motivated to weed the lily garden. It remained cloudy most of the morning and I was further motivated to mow and weed around some of the palm trees.
Now, late in the day, the sun is out and as it stretches across the sky, the mountains are green and bright as sparkling emeralds.

I put turkey tom on top of the dead eucalyptus trunk that sits in the lily garden. I know he will rust, but it is much better to have him here than inside the West Wing where I have received a fair number of cuts by backing up into his sharp tin feathers.

The lilies are night bloomers, pink and white with speckled rosy centers, on long thick stalks that fall over first thing in the morning. They are also very fragrant, but you have to be out at midnight to catch the scent.



Senor and Humberto switched gears this morning and began working on the columns again for the portal. The wood form is filled with cement. They need to do four more of these and the portal columns will be done.

I am very frustrated with blogger, again. I posted on this once before and I am hoping someone has discovered a solution to the problem by now and can fill me in. Blogger simply will not let me move my photos around. It makes it difficult to connect word content with the photos. Even when I try to upload them in precisely the correct sequence I need, blogger changes it on its own.
The last time I brought this up almost all the comments were from folks who said they had given up on blogger and were switching to wordpress. I am not sure I could move this whole blog to wordpress. I would be pressed for the knowledge to do it and I am not sure my mom, HI MOM! would ever find me again.
So I hope someone has found a solution and can tell me about it so I can stay here with blogger. I have tried accessing the blog through numerous browsers and same problem each time.

So, Help is what I need! All information received will be considered.

I am off to the fake kitchen. I cooked a mango meatloaf this morning, just a regular old meatloaf with a cup of chopped mango added. I will slice it for dinner and top it with a cold sauce of brown sugar, ketchup and one minced habanero chili and another half a cup of mango. I think Barcelona is playing tonight and we might sit in the bedroom, in the Pier One chairs and watch a little soccer.
Que le vaya bien! linda lou

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

We've Got Mail

Buenos dias! It is a very stormy Friday here, rainy, cloudy, windy, but very warm.

I have been going down to the Palacio every day for several weeks now and every day there is new mail in the box.

Some people in Alamos seem afraid to use the Palacio Officino de Correo and it is very possible that the mail service has only recently upgraded to its current system. I believe it is now possible to get all of the mail sent here to Alamos and possible as well, for all of the mail sent from Alamos to reach its destination.

I use the post office frequently. I have actually shipped around fifty packages or envelopes out of the Palacio office in the almost two years we have been here. I have shipped all over the world, most of it glass or jewel related items that people have purchased from one of my online shops.

Everything has reached its destination. If I need delivery confirmation, I ship first to my sister in the states and then she adds the confirmation and ships it further.

So, imagine my excitement in the last few weeks as I have gone to the Palacio and seen mail in our box.

Mail has come from Texas, Tennessee, California, Washington, Oregon, Arkansas, Colorado, Arizona, Minnesota, Michigan, New York, Idaho and Virginia.

Most of the senders we know, but a few letters came from folks who read the blog and just wanted to wish us a Merry Christmas.

Thank you to everyone who sent mail in December!

It is finally arriving!!!!!!!!!

Now, I have said we get the mail, but we do not necessarily get it in a timely manner. I once received a letter from Seattle in six days. I received another from Texas in seven days.

Most mail arrives in two to three weeks. But, I do not have any problem with that.

I am not in any hurry.

The letter below, first class from Seattle, 79 cents, mailed December 18th........... arrived 15th of January................................
Encino, California, mailed on the 19th of December.....................

routed through Mexico City and received on the 5th of January.........box full of chocolate chip cookies, $8.25 to get them here....................yum, a cookie is a cookie, and these still taste good after 16 days of travel........................senor's college found us........................mailed from Colorado Springs, December 12th, made a stop in San Carlos, received January 10th..................................

another letter from Seattle, pretty Christmas postal stamps, mailed December 22nd.......................

arrived 12th of January, after a stop in San Carlos........................

Little Rock, Arkansas, mailed December 19th.............................

San Diego, California, mailed December 28th........................

both letters, in the box, the 12th of January..............................

On the 15th of December, my sister mailed a box of chocolate stained glass window cookies............my favorite. In the month it took them to arrive the 15 cookies or so became 1....................still good.

I could go on and on about the mail we have been receiving.

When the Palacio is closed on Saturday and Sunday I go into mail withdrawal. I can hardly wait for Monday and often, I am there at 8am when the mail lady unlocks the big wooden doors. I always say good morning and ask how she is as I make a beeline for the box.

So, I was very disappointed when I went to the Palacio yesterday, a Thursday, only to find the big wooden doors to the building shut tight and under guard of not one, but two policia.

The bad news is I could not get the mail, the good news is I have never seen those beautiful doors before.

The building was closed because the FAOT festival kicked off last night with the US soprano, Jessye Norman and pianist Mark Markham. All the government offices were shut down and the doors were locked.

So instead of getting mail, I hung around the Plaza for over an hour, taking lots of photos.

There are people everywhere. There is press everywhere. There are RV tour cars everywhere.

Now, it is pouring rain, buckets and buckets and the canalis are flowing like little rivers.

I can only imagine that there is not a soul in town......................but tomorrow is another day!

Below are 2 young american musicians being interviewed by Radio Sonora. After the interview they performed while sitting on a bench at the plaza, for street money. They were quite good. I took alot of photos and I will post FAOT Day One manana.

I have to do my Spanish homework, look for my rain jacket and head to class soon............adios.

You Must Remember This

Buenas Tardes.

According to an online weather report, we have been in the middle of a water vapor loop.

It has been raining since Friday. We have had light rain and very heavy rain. We have had a few brief moments when we thought we saw blue sky, only to have it darken up again and rain heavily.

The sun has been out for about half an hour now, but as I write, the temperature has dropped and the sky is darkening again in every direction. The online weather station says we are still in the loop...................

An Alamos resident reported four inches on her rain gauge and someone else called us and reported six.

Our gauge says FULL at seven and who knows what slipped over the top and onto the ground.

I am here to report that it was a HECK OF ALOT OF RAIN...........................


Now I know you must remember this.............. Hurricane Norbert, a year ago, on October 11. This is not a Norbert by any means, of course, but it is still alarming and worriesome to many people.



When we came home last night, I heard a very familiar sound that I really did not plan on hearing ever again.............the sound of rushing water and large knocking or banging. With a knot in my stomach, and in the pouring rain, Senor and Culver and Jenny and I walked to the Chalaton Arroyo. I already knew what would be there.


This morning I was up before daybreak and up at the Chalaton Arroyo. These are the pictures I took.

Below, I am looking down my street. Water is pouring down my street and every street in town.

The Chalaton is uphill and behind me.

At the arroyo water is rushing and I can see the small boulders and rocks that were banging and knocking as they tumbled along in the night.

The sign to the left is for a small grocery store called Pinney's. The store was hit hard during Norbert, but in this tropical depression called Olaf, it appears okay. The bulldozers came out after I took these photos and widened the sides of the arroyo. This prevented the water from coming around and destroying Pinney's again and actually increased the current at the main Chalaton Arroya crossing.

There appeared to be a medical emergency across the water, somewhere in the barrio. Ambulances and Policia were abundant, but after much yelling across the roaring water, the emergency seemed to take care of itself and everyone left.

If you look very closely you can see people are standing on the small footbridge that was partially destroyed during Norbert. The bridge is accesible from the Chalaton, but cannot be reached in this water from the other side. Below is another view of the arroyo and the footbridge. The water is trying to come around to Pinney's front door, but it will not make it.
Below another road leads to the Chalaton Arroyo and the water continues on, where it will meet the Arroyo Aduana.

This is the water as it flows at the end of that street.

In town, I am walking on Juarez to go and see the Aduana Arroyo. Water spills everywhere, draining from the insides of many courtyards. Other than the sound of water, the streets are quiet.

Up on the new arched walkways, I look both ways to see the large Aduana. The streets are blocked off and no one can drive across, but the new bridges are such an advantage and people are beginning to come across now to town and go to work like they would on any other day. I see a woman I know and she tells me that there is no school today.

And below, the clean up begins.

After breakfast with Culver and Jenny, the four of us walk back to the Chalaton. The situation there has not changed much, but more people are out looking at the water. The tortilla truck and the new loud Yaqui milk truck come up to try and cross. neither of them gets very close to the water. A man tries to throw a black bag across the rushing water to someone on the bridge. It floats downstream.


The man below has tried twice to cross the water, but turns back each time.Finally a younger man comes along and together, they cross.Our walk took us by DIF, where trucks and dozers were lined up, ready to work if needed. A friend from DIF came out to greet me. There are no big problems................. she said..........we are very lucky.

There was loud music playing from a radio inside DIF. People were outside, just sitting around chatting........................last night I dreamed I was cooking eggs there....................do you need help............i asked............she gave me a little kiss on the cheek and shoved me toward the street..........okay, then, bye, i said......................... and she laughed at me. Over at Barrio de La Capilla, the road has been washed out. You can see it way below. This is where the huge bridge washed out in Norbert. The concrete edge in the lower left is about a thirty foot drop straight down into the water.

The water flows on through the Aduana Arroyo to meet the Chalaton, beyond the church. Later this afternoon I plan to go there and have a look, but I asked about it at DIF and she assured me that the bulldozer widened arroyos could handle the water.

So as I write, the rain has started again and Jenny and I are off soon to look for rain ponchos. We think this water vapor loop may decide to follow us to the Copper Canyon on Wednesday.

I will try and post photos of the meeting of the two arroyos manana.

Alamos appears fine, from what I have seen and heard............

The arroyos have been finally reopened to vehicle traffic, but the Chalaton Barrio remains closed off because the water there is too fast and deep. All houses on both sides look fine, just very wet. There is water in all the small arroyos in the Guayaparine and Esmeralda barrios. There is deep water in the small arroyo that has to be crossed to get to the Pantheon and Mirador. We tried and had to turn back.............tomorrow we might try again and perhaps all the water will be gone..............

I hear alot of music coming from different places in town. I hear kids riding their bikes out on our street and dogs are barking and the burro is very loud and a group of guys are playing basketball over at the miner's house and all seems normal, I guess.

We are just very wet..............Linda Lou