Speechless in Alamos

Hola!

Waiting for rain here. The rain count for our yard is around 17 1/2 inches for the season and we expect a lot more. A good 4 month season should get us close to 40.

I suggested to Senor that we leave open the lid to the cistern and collect all this rain water. He said, no need, the drainage system off the roof is working great. I said.........what drainage system, we don't have a system, yet...............he laughed, sure we do, the one that has been there for two years, you have a terrible memory!..................haha, i said, we have not had a system working there for 2 years...............we have a system, he said....................but, it doesn't work, i said...................does, too, he said.................does not.........does, too.

Well this went on and on for about 10 minutes and finally, I got him to admit the system has been there for 2 years and he just got it all hooked up the other day and it is now catching rain water. With the sloping roof completed over the south west end of the casa, the rain water now runs down the slope, into the big pvc pipes that are inside the wall, down through the outside pipe and into the cistern. Then he just sighed and said....... okay, i guess you will want to blog that, but try and be nice about it. I was speechless. I just frowned at him.

Below you can see the big pipe the rain water comes down.

Now Senor is probably the smartest person I know, but Senor is not always consistently smart. He was so proud of himself and the fact that the water run off was being collected, he announced he was going to turn off the city water. Ah, ha! You know where I am going with this one! After all of our water problems in June and July, I was speechless when I opened the lid to the cistern. Water off, no rain for a few days, no water in the cistern............see what I mean, it's the consistency part I am worried about........do you have to blog that............he asked.

Recently I have had the good luck to get caught out in the rain and even better luck finding interesting places to get out of it. I love being in the museum when it rains. There is a huge screen covered portal in the center of the building. The screen shields the portal from the sun, but when it rains, the portal fills with water very quickly. Of course, there is drainage that filters to the street, but it is really something to see as it pours into the courtyard.

Below is the entrance to the museum.

Here is the open portal. The art celebration was on this day and everyone was hoping it would not rain. Eventually the mueum was so packed with people I was hoping for rain just to cool off.

Below are my 2 maskaras. The first one broke in the firing, thank goodness. It looks better broken than it did when it was in one piece. I might convince Senor to hang that one on the front door when we get a front door.

The second one fired with permanent wood ash and I think it is an improvement as well.

Last week I got caught in the rain near the library. It is the first door on the left, next to the post office. The motorcycle is how mail is delivered in Sonora. Every town has one.

They were having a kids' art camp that day. The rain had stopped and the air was fresh and cool.

The pretty little girl in the left foreground is in a lot of my photos. I don't see her when I am taking the photo. It is later when I look through the shots, I see her. The little boys below got into a pencil fight which resulted in silence. None of them would speak to each other.

The inside of the library is bright and smells like freshly polished wood and old books. All the classics are there, in Spanish, of course. In addition, there are huge numbers of books on biology, mathematics and the theories of the old astronomers. There are some old 'National Geographics' from the eighties and they are the only English reading materials in the library, with the exception of 'Learning English' workbooks and dictionaries.

While I was reading about the possibilty of zebras becoming extinct by the year 2001, a huge clap of thunder made every kid jump and scream and a heavy rainfall filled the library portal with streaming water. Then everyone was up against the long wall and speechless as the water streamed into the courtyard.

Later, back home, right before the next storm hit, Senor and I took a little walk back to the Chalaton Arroyo.

Senor saw these little guys up on the bridge.

Senor yelled.........hola, my amigos!.............Then he started beating his chest like a wild man.................what are you doing, i asked.....................hey! You are my Zapata friends, he yelled to them..................what Zapata friends, i asked...................By now Senor is really drumming on his chest and the small boy has a wooden stick gun pointed down at Senor's head..................you know, the kids that sold me the little bottle that belonged to Pancho Villa, oh yea!........guys, I mean Pancho Villa...............And he starts beating his chest again......................bring me more bottles that belonged to Pancho Villa, bring me the rusted chain, he yelled. By now the big kid has the wooden stick gun pointed at Senor...............hmmm, maybe they want their bottle back, i said to Senor.

The kids just stared at Senor. Now that's an honest, common mistake I am sure many people would make, calling Pancho Villa, Zapata. We can only hope the young boys understood his English words and they were simply so surprised that Senor wanted more of their merchandise, they were speechless.

Senor looked and me and winced................well, i suppose you are going to want to blog that, too.............I just stared at him, speechless. It started to rain and we went home......................

Senor Goes Poking

Buenos tardes. It is raining, nice and gentle, just a little chipichipi.

Good grief, have you wondered where we were? where we are? why we have not posted?

Very simple, very busy.

Senor has been up on the roof. And last week he hired two additional workers to help out. Imagine that!

Humberto got to stand around and mix concrete and get it into the wheelbarrow, while the other two workers got it from the wheelbarrow into buckets and carted it up to the portal roof, where they poured it and Senor smoothed it out. Fortunately, it was somewhat overcast those days. I have been in the laundry room/work room. In the last two weeks I received several custom glass orders. I cannot just fire five pieces of glass. I have to cut, grind, cold work, and file and prepare enough to fill the kiln. I have mentioned this before, so in order to get the custom orders done in as short amount of time as possible, I have been going pretty much non stop.

The little thermometer in there has been reading around one hundred, so I had to set up a couple of portable fans in order to work.

So, now the kiln is full and it is firing as I write. And it will fire for twelve hours each day for five days. HOT in that room. I will not even go in there but to peek around the corner so I can read the digital screen and make sure everything is on schedule.

So, we took a little break a few days ago and left town for the day. The roadsides are covered with wildflowers, yellow and orange buttercups and the pink vine the bees love so much.

The hills are jungly and emerald green. Someday I will learn how to photo shop telephone cables out of the photos, but you should get all fuzzy just looking at the green hillsides.

And we ended up here.

I am a shell collector. There were very few shells this trip.

Senor is a poker. There was a lot to poke this trip.

If I get too near and in his way or ask him about what it is he is poking at, he will poke at me.
Above, he is poking at the blue eyed crab in the photo below. That crab kept flipping over, trying to scurry away from the poker.

Here Senor is poking at a dead seahorse. I wanted to pick it up and keep it. He poked it and smelled it and said............no.

Here he is just fixing to poke something else. He needs to study it for awhile before he pokes it though. It was just a little blue jelly fish that he flipped back into the waves before I could get close enough for a photo.

Then he poked at a dead fish he called a rooster fish. He poked at a bottle filled with sand. He poked at some ring pop tops from a can. He poked at sea weed. He poked at a broken beer bottle. He poked at a buried rope. Then he walked on down the beach.......walked on down the beach looking for more things to poke. He is such an easy person to go to the beach with.

What a lovely day at the beach.

adios, linda lou

No Cool Title, Just Stuff..............

Buen dia! We are seeing brilliant sunsets at night. After the sunsets and late into the evening we have been getting chipichipi rains and bright displays of lightning.

And we are paying dearly now during the day. The humidity this week has been hovering around eighty to ninety percent and the temperatures have been well over a hundred. Now this would not be so bad if we only had some wind, but there is not any at all.

I have received a number of custom glass orders and as soon as I return from my walk or ride in the morning, I have been retreating to the laundry room to cut glass. It is stifling in there and we are down to one small working fan. There are no ceiling fans in that room. I have been working with a wet rag around my head, but I don't think that helps at all. When I cold work, or grind glass, I use a face mask and goggles, now that is suffocating as well. I look like the creature from the black lagoon with a towel around its head.

Both Senor and Humberto continue to put in a good four hours and Senor retreats to the bedroom and the mini split for short little breaks while Humberto hides briefly under the mesquite.

Below you can see Senor up on the roof where the beams are now in and ready for the vigas. The first section of vigas will come out above the door for about eight feet.

In the second photo, from last year, you can see how far the original roof extended and then, you can see the Hilton Garden Room, which was under the old roof. I am hoping to recreate the garden room, temporarily of course, once the vigas and the roof are in. Oh, you know, Senor may have other plans, but I hope to win out.In addition to cutting glass, I did make it to the clay sculpting class at the museum. There were only a handful of us for the four day class. The fellow in the blue and white shirt is the instructor. This class was the mask sculpting class and the calaca katrina class will be in the fall.
The instructor, Jorge Mendevil, is a very talented sculptor and Ana, next to him, is a clay artist as well.

Across from our class, young teens were sculpting clay jewelry.

And down the hall, the violin class was being held. A little screechy, but some very determined kids were there every day.

In the mornings, the kids come for clay class and their work is spread out to dry on the museum floor. This will all be fired soon out at the Uvalama kiln and I believe you can look back through my labels to see the actual firing we did last year.

Here is my first mask below. I put it on the floor in the kids' section, had a look around and realized that most of their work was so much better than mine. So I picked it up again and moved it away from all that professional looking stuff. Then the ears fell off my guy and I wondered why in the world I even put ears on him to begin with. Maybe I can glue them back on after the fire or maybe they will get lost in the kiln, which might be a good thing.

Well, the rest of the mascaras I made were really no better. I hope they will look better after they are fired, so I will show them to you at a later date. However, Jorge did say all my eyes have good, soulful expressions. Do you see that? A soulful expression? I studied it for quite a while, but I don't see it.

I am just glad the kids are not in my class. Their work is incredibly creative and mine is just well, created.

Okie dokie, I am off to Navajoa to buy a new floor fan for the laundry room work shop. The problem with custom orders is I cannot just put six or seven pieces in the kiln. I have to keep cutting and cutting to get around sixty items, which is what fits in the kiln and justifies a fire. So, a new fan will help cool down the room a little. Maybe a pretty head towel, too, something with flowers on it.

Air conditioning in new old car, a K freeze for the drive, a lovely morning.

Que tengas buen dia! linda lou

Gracias, Thank You For Coming, and Adios

Hola!

I feel like I am living in a jungle here. The coyote fence is covered with thick green vines. I did finally get the yard mowed and the weed eater devoured what I could not cut. I slashed one of Senor's bouganvillea, so that is what I get for calling him a name under my breath. I will try not to do that again. Now I have to baby this little plant and try and convince it to live.

Talk about feeling guilty, whooo-wheeee. I should have been more careful.

When I told him about it, and believe me, I pondered that one..............tell, do not tell, tell, do not tell.................he looked so sad. He inspects those vines daily, in the evening. I don't watch him, but I suspect he pets them and talks to them.

All this rain, and I calculate by my gauge slightly over twelve inches, continues to bring out all the wildlife. We are seeing so many birds, many of them babies, like the little male cardinal below. I even saw a small covey of baby quail yesterday morning, running under the portal. They were on a mission and scurried through before I could grab the camera. Cookies was quickly on their tail, but they made the highway crossing easily. Now I do think I would have really felt guilt had he caught one and I had not tried to prevent that. Here is the little guy again against the backdrop of Senor's socks on the line. The laundry was there for three days. I now have a lot of photos of birds and socks.

Yellow bellied sapsuckers were around Sunday morning as well as the Gila woodpeckers, warblers, mockingbirds, house sparrows, flycatchers and magpies. Hummingbirds, a couple of frogs. I saw all of these yesterday.

But, come with me. I want to take you somewhere...............

We are going out to the big palm.

I was out here the other day and standing near the palm I heard what sounded like a rushing stream. Certain that one of Senor's drippers had broken and was gushing water, I checked the hoses and found nothing. I stood under the palm. Stand under it with me. Can you hear that noise? Rushing water, swooshing sounds, rustling.

Now look straight up into the palm branches. That is the sound of hundreds of baby birds, chirping, hopping, rustling, fluttering, flittering, cooing, shooing. They sound like a rushing stream. I have never heard anything like it.

The monkey man comes around once in awhile. He cuts the palms in town so they look nice and pretty like the one below.

A few people have asked us why we don't cut our palm. And indeed, we did have Monkey Man cut it our first year here.

Look below.

In the middle and right half of the photo are three gray -white objects. Two are along the tree line and a third is right in the middle of that bushy business in the center. Multiply those three objects many, many times and you will have hundreds of bats that come out of that palm at dusk. It is fascinating and a little frightening at the same time. But we know they are eating all of our mosquitoes.

I just make sure the bedroom doors are closed and try and sit very still. The air is thick with them. For around half an hour, they fly under the portal and in and out of the columns and right around our chairs.

I am getting more and more used to their neighborly visits, and they are good neighbors because they keep their visits short.

Of course, there is a lot more going on at night. Thankfully, most of it I do not see. I found what look like raccoon prints the other morning. A snake was rustling in the grass between our place and new old Jesus'. I know there are skunks and opossums next door.

And we are seeing tarantulas and scorpions as they have again taken to their well travelled highway under the portal. Now these guys are my least favorite and I have made many posts about them. I just cannot seem to get used to them coming around to visit. And I especially do not like it when they just come right on in and don't even take the time to announce their arrival. They are really just bad neighbors. They come and sit and hang around, look at your stuff, eat your food and blow their nose in your bathroom.

Senor has adjusted quite well, with his feet over the rebar bridge. I drag my chair as far away from the route as possible. I want Senor to keep the shovel close by. I just don't know if I can be neighborly toward them and leave them alone.



Cookies on the other hand, the perfect host, comes out from under the chair only after the bats go home to the palm and if a fast moving tarantula or scorpion comes along, he turns his back on it and walks away. He is a very smart cat.....oh, did we have guests?..............gracias, thank you for coming and adios is his attitude.

Last night he could have cared less about any creatures on the little highway, as he had knocked himself out earlier in the day by first eating the little mouse and then, the lizard for dessert.

Several months ago, two men came by, one with an important red metal box and the other with a hook with a noose on one end. They were giving rabies shots to animals. After much hesitation, and discussion about their jobs and equipment for doing their jobs, we finally caught Cookies, who had seen them coming, and allowed them to give him the shot. Cookies was not happy, but it was over quickly. Before he jetted around the corner of the casa, Cookies turned and glared at them and then, us...........gracias, adios and now, get the %#*^ out of here, is what he said in cat language. True to himself, again a nice host.

I am glad we let them shot needle him. Sometimes I think I need to grab him and get him away from the little things he likes to chew up and eat, and sometimes after the feast, he looks pretty drained for hours. But I never do. That's his thing. Besides, some day, he may protect us from something really, really big.

So now that I have whet your appetite with Cookies' delectable menu, I will show you those crab cakes. On top is sour cream mixed with a little sugar and Sonoran hot sauce and huge caperberries. Martha Stewart oven fries and Navajoa grapes add some crunch.

Oh me, oh my, it is almost three-thirty and Senor and Humberto are still pouring cement into the first viga that will go across the space outside the West Wing. I might show you that tomorrow.

I feel kind of guilty that I did not remember that Humberto's water jug went empty and he came to ask me twice for water and I did not remember to fill it for two hours after he asked. I had an ice cold topochico.

Senor is just drenched with sweat, my t shirt is all nice and clean and smells like Suave soap. The tamale kid did not show up this morning and I don't think either of them has eaten anything. I had a nice bowl of rice mixed with salsa verde and red tomato.

It's only ninety-six degrees out there, but they have been up on the roof all morning. I should feel guilt, but cannot make up my mind if I do or not, it is just so nice and cool in the bedroom where Cookies and I are. I really need to take a siesta and wake up all refreshed so I can decide just how neighborly I will be tonight.............gracias, thank you for coming and adios. linda lou