On This Day Before the Day

Yesterday's storm came late in the day with these beautiful clouds billowing against the setting sun. I had to pull out the fleece again. It was cozy and warm against the cold wind of the storm.

This is the day before the Day of Independence. I went downtown around noon to see what activity I could find. And there was nothing. You could have heard a pin drop in the Plaza....no people, no cars, no wind, nothing. The big wooden doors to the Palacio were closed tight.

I drove up to the Mirador. There was enough breeze there to keep the flag waving.



The roof tops of all the houses below are gleaming white, all freshly impermeabled, coated with rubber sealant to keep out the summer rains.




You can see the Palacio in the center of the photo, big and brown, silent, taking a siesta before it awakens to welcome its loving people later tonight.

Below I could see the distant clouds churning to the west, but not too threatening and the sun was bright and hot.

Back inside new old car, a quick check on the time told me I had twenty minutes before Senor would need the car so he could get to the ladies for bridge.

I drove west, past the Tecate store, where I finally saw people and activity. Men stood, laughing and talking, waiting their turn to buy. I stopped in the OXXO and stood in line for five minutes to get a frozen coffee drink. The shop keepers were bringing in huge bins filled with ice and Tecate and the Tecate was going out the door as fast as they could get it in. Farther up the street school kids were walking, blowing trumpets and banging drums. Dogs were running in and out between their legs. A few girls watched the boys playing basketball at the sports complex. A girl sat at the bus stop waving her plastic Mexican flag.

A quick turn around, speeding for home, a toss of the keys to Senor and a retreat to the coolness of the bedroom. After relaxing for a few minutes under the mini split, trying to decide how to spend the afternoon, the power went out for over an hour and a half. I moved outdoors to the portal where a cool wind picked up, thunder roared and a heavy rain began to fall.

I went and got my fleece.

Now I hear town coming alive. The delivery trucks are rambling up and down the street. Ivan, new old Jesus' nephew, who inherited the little casa, is trying out some new opera tunes on his stereo, the kid several streets over is playing his pan flute, still only one song, El Condor. The cow bells are tinkling over in Rancho Colorada and it is almost time for Senor to return.

We will be wide awake when the activity begins at midnight, listening from the portal to the excitement from the 'grito' and the fireworks and then, on the streets for the parade in the morning. Until then, on this day before the day, adios.......

More Sunlight, More Firewood, More View

Buenos dias. In the night we woke to a huge windstorm, the sounds were very reminiscent of the ones we heard almost three years ago during Hurricane Norbert. The only thing missing was the constant wail of the sirens. Several times I said to Senor...........what's zat....... Senor, not having being raised in the south, said several times.......what in the hell was that. When I went out at the crack of dawn I saw that all of our ladders which had been leaning against the portal had fallen, all of our plastic furniture was out in the back of the yard, the plastic white tables legs flung like broken stilts to the side, the gleaming flat tops leaning against the coyote fence. The yard was littered with branches and several ten foot tops of tecoma bell trees. And we had a new view of the mountains because most of the plumeria trees were on top of the asador.


Humberto spent four hours this morning sawing the plumeria trunks into firewood which he says need to age for a year. As the morning heated up we realized just how much shade we actually lost. In return, our mountain view which has always been spectacular, is even more spectacular. With Norbert, Mt Alamos got eleven inches of rain in two hours, we only got one half an inch with last night's storm. Thank goodness, the thing we never want to see again are any of his relatives.


I was very worried about downtown and all the banners and flags and pendants and drapes, but a quick tour of town on new old bike showed everything looked normal and one of the city workers told me there was very little wind in town. Soon the kids were on their way to and from school, delivery trucks were at the Mercado, the vendors were setting up their food stalls and the newspaper guys were on the corner. Just normal as can be.


The city worker was busy filling the cans with kerosene and inserting long wicks. The blackened cans will go out on the tops of the homes and businesses on the fifteenth, and will be lighted before the grigo at midnight. More shop owners were busy hanging drapes and flags. The Oaxcan artisans were coming out of their tents after a restful sleep, the music man was putting on a good mix and the shoeshine stand was ready for customers. Yes, just normal as can be.After talking with a few people about the storm, I have learned that the hill tops are the ones that really got hit and that would include us. A few folks out farther in more open barrios also lost a few tree limbs here and there. But overall, no real serious damage anywhere.

Next year when the hot summer sun beats down on us, we will not miss the thick lush plumeria trunks that were broken off last night because the portal will give us shade. The birds who had their homes in the tecoma bell tree tops will find new places to live and as the long hot summer fades into autumn and then to winter, we will most likely toss an aged plumeria trunk into the outdoor fireplace, and sit back and enjoy the view.
adios.............

Preparing for Independence Day in Alamos

Hola............... just a few photos today. I want you to see how Alamos is preparing for Independence day which is on the 16th.

September 16th, marks the anniversary of the day the War for Independence from Spain began. The parade will be grand but the real activity begins on the 15th, when the Mayor, on the second story balcony of the Palacio, gives the cry, or grito for independence, at midnight. It is the reenactment of the proclamation of war, given in 1810, by Father Hidalgo, in the state of Guanajuato, that everyone wants to hear.

That is, everyone who can stay up that late and make their way to town to hear it. We have never been and I understand it is a huge crowd that gathers and in order to get near the Palacio you need to be on your way there several hours early. We have always chosen the luxury of staying home and listening to the crowd break out in waves and waves of accelerated whooping and hollering and screaming and yelling and then, boom, the fireworks light up the sky. While we do not get to hear the proclamation, we can hear the aftermath just fine and we also see the fireworks from our casa.

Senor is snoozing, Cookies is snoozing. Time for me to join them.

que le vaya bien! linda lou

It is So Senor

Hola, hola, hola and all that good stuff. I am so excited to tell you that my wonderful friend, Trish, who reads the blog, emailed me over my photo distress and informed me that Blogger is updating its format and I should read all about it to figure it out. I did that and decided at the risk of not figuring it out on my own, I will just keep the old blogger.

However, she sent four emails of fabulous, inventive ways of solving my problem. In one she suggested copy and paste and just move the photos that way. Good grief, it worked!
Thank you, Trish! And thanks to everyone else who commented or personally emailed me to solve the problem or like Senor who can be So Senor, suggested "does this really matter in the grand scheme of things?"

I loaded the four photos below, and you know, for me, four is dinky. I usually have many more, especially if Senor is giving me great photo opportunities. I mean, the hair dryer? Priceless........ Poking on the beach........Priceless, again. I could go on and on, but in case I get to 'publish post' and the copy and paste should turn out to be fake, and that would be a real catastrophe, I will have not sat here tediously uploading many photos for no purpose.

Plus, I have major things to accomplish this afternoon while Senor is bridging a few streets over with the ladies. I am in a serious cleaning mode.
Company is coming........KD and Novio.
We are going to meet Novio.

I am dusting the ceilings, sweeping the Glasspondstudio workshop, painting the vigas in the West Wing (for the second time), washing the Obregon Wal Mart sheets with the new Ace soap that smells like lime and rinsing with the newest Svuarte, called Elegance. Squishing all the mealy bugs in the fake kitchen's cupboards and tossing the bad flour, keeping the coffee can lid on the shower drains so the pinacates can't come up the pipes, ordering Cookie's flea medicine from El Coyote, mowing the yard (for the third time this week) and looking for my friend, Martin, to come and help me weed. He comes by every week looking for work we don't have and now, when I need him, he is not to be found.

I measured the beds. Seventy-four inches. Novio is six-two. In case you don't know, that's seventy-four inches. KD is five-two on a good top knot hair day. At first I did not think that is such a big difference in size. But if you release one foot out on your tape measure and hold it straight up in front of your eyes, a foot is a lot taller than you'd think. I guess I can put my newly covered bench at the foot of the bed, for his toes.


The doors that enter the West Wing are seventy-four inches. He isn't going to fit, especially not with shoes on. He will duck or go barefoot. Then I will worry about tarantulas and scorpions under foot, spiders over head. I am really not a worrier, but I am worried I may become one.

Senor and Humberto have their own projects to complete. Their goal is to get the eight feet of roof done, varro blanco'd in, cemented and impermeabled over, so we can have a dry place to sit and eat meals providing the wind is not blowing over ten miles an hour in which case we will just need to grab the cat and all go sit in new old car, where I doubt Novio is going to fit. I want to be able to eat under the dry portal, but Senor is just being So Senor. He says that is a work zone, not a dining zone. I plan to go into whine mode and see if there can't be a small space cleared and cleaned out for dining for four.

The final columns for the north end of the portal have been poured. Humberto had to take out most of the left half of the big tree there so the last column would fit. We have lost our shade from the tree, but gained a considerable amount of mountain view that we usually only have in winter since the tree is deciduous.

I have weeded this three times this week and the space, which was thigh high with grass several weeks ago, is looking good.







The plan is exciting. We will drive to Mazatlan, where KD and Novio will fly. We will lay around on the beach for a few days and then drive north to Alamos. Senor says it can be done in six hours. We dilly dallied last time and it took seven. I really do think Novio is barely going to fit in new old car, so I hope it will not seem like six hours to him. We will be in Alamos for a week and then drive again to Mazatlan where surprise! we will hook up with Ian and his friend!!!

We will lay around on the beach for several days with Ian and Friend and KD and Novio. Then KD and Novio are off to Denver, and we will drive with Ian and Friend, six hours north to Alamos, where we will stay for a week. Then, back to Mazatlan, to lay around the beach for a few days and then see them off to Seattle. I told this to someone and she said............jeez, just put them on the bus, that's too much..............i replied, the bus ride from Mazatlan is almost twelve hours................i would self destruct just waiting for them to get here. Besides I like to go and I am pretty excited to be going south instead of north.

KD and Ian could not get the same days off from work, but the overlap of several days in Mazatlan is a great surprise and I can hardly wait to see them all.

It is thundering outside and Radio Sonora is playing Lady Gaga tunes. Time for me to hustle back to check my list and find out what I am doing next.

Before I go, I want to show you my favorite photo. I am planning to blow it up and frame it and hang it in a very prominent place in the casa. It is So Senor.


Que le vaya bien! Linda lou

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

It Will Still be There Tomorrow

Hola. Days are getting shorter here already and the sun has taken a swift dip to the south bringing small shadows to areas of the casa where the sun has beaten now for months. Days are almost unbearably hot this past week as the humidity rises and we are spending longer hours in the bedroom with air conditioning and piles of unread books and magazines.

Often we hear the 'chute, chute' and short whistle of the mama quail outside our window. She paces the top of the ladrillo wall and looks cautiously down the other side and into the field. Over the spinning of the ceiling fan and the soft whir of the mini split, we hear little 'chute, chute's' and peeps from the other side of the wall, as the babies follow on the ground in the field. Often she hides herself in the lacy green branches of the fuego tree and calls to them. We wonder what she must be teaching them.

The rains continue to make gardening a chore and I tend to only mow what is in the shade in the morning and then, yet another section later in the day when it is shaded. The result is a very lop sided looking lawn with huge sections of closely mowed grass next to patches of weed that are two feet tall because there is never shade there. I spend a great deal of time visualizing how the lawn will look when it is covered with flagstone.

It is too hot for anything to bloom but the pink vine. It covers the stable and thrives in the heat. The ground below it is dusted with tiny pink petals.

I do most of my cooking early in the morning, creating all kinds of interesting meals that we will then eat cold later in the evening after it has cooled off. We will sit under the portal, watching the lightning in the east and eat cold chayotes, a Mexican squash, that I have baked with garlic and butter. Sometimes a little smoked chuleta, pork, will get sprinkled on top with onion and black olives and capers. If it is too hot outside, we might watch a soccer match inside on the computer and feast on sliced cold chicken dipped in sour cream mixed with a little sugar and hot sauce. Ancho chili marinated cold meats with sharp cheeses. Barbequed oysters and buttered toast. Jicama and beet salads. I am becoming an expert at preparing food that will be eaten cold.

Once in awhile Senor will cook at the asador. This always seems to happen when rain is not expected but comes anyway. A few nights ago, I thought the scene looked suspicious and worthy of being investigated. I saw him fanning the dying coals................that is my new hair dryer, i said, what are you doing.............. He tried to explain that there is so much humidity in the air he can't get the flames going. I unplugged the dryer, took it from him and put it back inside in a new hiding place. I have not even used it yet. I have an old hair dryer. I gave him that one to put in his asador cooking collection.

The vigas continue to go up outside the West Wing, on both sides of the big beam. Senor claims that the roof will be up there by October.


The days are so hot, I cannot imagine he will be able to continue working at this pace to have eight feet of roof on by then. I am not pushing it. They start at seven. Senor works for an hour and takes a break, puts in more time, another short break. Humberto starts and does not stop. Senor says Humberto is used to the heat, used to working in it. I watch Humberto's water pitcher and fill it at least twice every morning.


I am watching the grass grow in the driveway. One day soon I will get out the weed eater and take care of it. I am too busy cooking to do it this week.
These grasshoppers are all over the yard. This is one of the smaller ones. If I could keep the grass down I think there would be less of them. There are crickets all over the place. They love the grass. Walking sticks are on the screen doors. Scorpions and tarantulas on the portal highway. Eerie iridescent green frogs lumber through the rain when it falls, their slow long legs shovel their bodies along. Bats fly low, under the portal, scooping up mosquitoes and fireflies light up like Christmas lights in the plumerias.

There is a snake in here. I like to think it spends more time at Iban's new old Jesus's casa than in our yard. There are caterpillars on the yellow belled tecoma trees, a dirty white and gray cat under the fig tree in the mornings watching the cardinals peck at the seed on the asador.I want to go out and mow this now. It is going into the shade and even though it is hot out, I think I could get most of it. I will think it over.

Last night we went to a party, and after an hour or so, the wind suddenly picked up and the thunder hit and the lightning struck and we scrambled home to find the power was out. We are ill prepared for power outages here. We have no batteries, no lanterns, few candles. We sat in the dark, under the portal and watched the storm. I left my lawn mowing sneakers out in the storm. They are still wet, too much humidity in the air for them to dry. I suppose I could go and get the new old hair dryer I gave Senor and try and dry them out. But there is that new book I picked up at the youth hostel the other day. I need to add all this new fired glass to my online Etsy shop. I talavera'd some wooden napkin ring holders and they need one clear coat of varnish. I still have my on going embroidery projects. I can think of a lot of reasons reason to let the grass have its way today. It will still be there tomorrow.

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......................