King Ant Killer

Hola.

There is good news. Senor feels better.

Now here is the bad news story. He was stung by a nasty red and black ant one morning. In the beginning, after he depleted a vocabulary that should not be heard by any ears other than his own, it just hurt. He iced it immediately and I made him a baking soda paste.

Then it turned bright red. Then it swelled.
Then he went to sleep for hours and hours and I began to worry. He slept through dinner. He did not feel like getting up the next morning. But he did stay awake and said he was fine, just tired. He went back to sleep.

That afternoon he read for awhile. Then he went back to sleep and slept again through dinner. He did not have any interest in watching Monday Night Football on the computer.

The following day, he was very tired, but able to eat something and complain that the ant bite really did hurt, and he thought he was probably having a slight reaction to it. He ignored all my pleas to go over to the hospital to get checked out. He went to sleep again. In the afternoon he asked for a thermometer. One hundred and two....................... hospital, i said................no, he said...............yes, i said. Well, you know what happened. We did not go. But he agreed that if he still felt bad and had a temperature the following day, yes, he would go. He went back to sleep.

In the morning he could barely talk. Raspy and quiet, but temperature was gone.................... what's wrong with your voice, i asked.......................my throat swelled up during the night and now i can't speak, he whispered back.................good, lord, hospital, i said.....................no!....but if it is not better later today then i will go...........
It got better. Last night he ate well, but he lost a few pounds during this five day ordeal. Today he still has a raspy voice but he had a good lunch and it's Thursday, so he is over with the ladies playing bridge.

If you recall, I am the ant killer. I am the one who searches high and low for the nest, for the leaf cutter path, for the sugar ant hill, for the parasol hole. I am the one that goes out in the middle of the night with the powder and the flashlight because earlier I saw signs of something chomping on the lime tree. I am the executioner of any ant I see.

This morning Senor was out early copy catting me, looking for ant holes, hills, nest, pathways, any signs he could find. When he found them he poured the borax and water mixture on or into their home. This is a mixture he keeps for an occasional spray on the varro blancos. Little critters get their feet in it and then rub it on their face and then, they fall over dead. Senor decided that if it could work on little winged critters, then why wouldn't it work on ants. So far he is working on two nests and he hopes it will at least drive them farther out into the yard and hopefully, out of the yard. He is a dedicated man.

I am happy that he is well enough to begin such a crusade. I think I should have called the clinic and asked them to send a doctor over and now that we know Senor obviously has had an allergic reaction to an ant bite, should it happen again, that is exactly what I will be doing. House calls are a highly accepted practice here in Alamos and I will not hesitate.

Before the ant attack, lights went in under the portal roof and they glow in the evening with soft yellow bulbs. This beautiful iron one which is larger and different from the others marks the center of the portal. There will be four more lights going to the north once that end of the portal is completed.






We also took the tarps off the couches and are now able to sit out and enjoy the evenings again. It looks pretty primitive, but one of these days I will dress it up and do a photo shoot. The roof does not completely cover the sitting area, so it is almost impossible to keep the area clean. I need to add a rug, some flowers, a table runner. You get the picture. The important thing is Cookies like it.............



So I am thinking that I have been dethroned and am no longer the Queen Ant Killer. There is now a King Ant Killer who is convinced he can and will do away with them.
And all it took was one little bite.
Oh, me, oh, my, siesta calls my name......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.

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

My Friend Flicka

Buen dia.
It is a sultry overcast day here in Alamos. There is not a lot of breeze and there is a little poof of darkness over Mt Alamos. For days it has felt like rain. It has smelled like rain. No rain.

Water is still being rationed, but in the same manner as I mentioned before. We have it for only a few hours every morning. I went to La Capilla on new old bike the other morning. La Capilla is a pretty little barrio on the other side of the Arroyo Aduana. I saw so many overflowing tinnacas. I was very surprised. But I believe people have figured out how to beat the water system. They are leaving their hoses on all the time. So, once the tinnaca is filled, they may already be gone for the morning or maybe they are still sleeping. And the water just runs and runs and runs. Into the street. Into the arroyo. I do not think we are saving any water, possibly only using more.

Here is my new little friend. I call him Flicka. He, I say he is a he, makes a flicka sound, over and over, all day long. He is a Gila Woodpecker and he has taken over both hummingbird feeders. The hummingbirds were beginning to come around and he chased them all away. They would be sipping away quietly and he would dive bomb them, force them off the feeder and take it all for himself.

I filled the second feeder which is on the adobe wall side. He took that one over as well. The good news is the hummingbirds are very smart. When he is busy at the feeder on the east side, they zip over to the west side. But, Flicka is also very smart. He watches them from the Plumeria tree. Wherever they zip, he zips as soon as possible after them. He wants to claim both feeders for himself. Spoiled little thing.

So I considered giving up the feeders, but last night I noticed Flicka has an early bedtime. So the hummingbirds are getting to the feeders late in the day and he is tucked away by his mommy in one of the yucca tree branches.

The feeders will stay up and Flicka will soon get too fat to fly and the hummingbirds will all fly with glee and drink nectar until they can drink no more.
Okie dokie, end of story. I have to water the palms. lindalou

It's a Flanperfect day

buen dia!
Ah, it is so beautiful here this morning. Wish you could be here!
The temperature is already rising, but we still have very little humidity, so a ninety degree day like we had yesterday only seems like it is eighty. The sky is slightly overcast and it is just very pleasant.

I just came back from my trip to the track, where there were quite a few folks walking or jogging. I always enjoy my track conversations with the Mexican women and men and their dogs.

When I returned home, I found this little fellow, dead on the table top. Cookies spends most of the night out now, and I imagine he threw this up in the air, thought he could catch it, and it landed on the table top and Cookies lost interest.

So we asked Umberto about it. It is a little thing, only about eight inches long, and skinny. Umberto called it a name and pointed to his arm and pantomined that a bite from that means a trip to the hospital and a shot in the rear end. Umberto solves alot of problems, I think, with a trip to the hospital for a shot in the rear end.

Grippe? shot. Nail in foot? shot. Scorpion bite? shot. Fall off ladder? shot.

So I hope this guy's mother or father is not around nearby. I would imagine they would be a bit larger.

I rode to the Panteon the other day. Here is Jesus' grave and some plastic flowers I left for him. The marker says he died April 9, but the weekend I returned from Texas, the seventeenth, someone old with white hair was back in the casa watching a boxing match on tv. I even commented to Senor.........wow, Jesus really has the volume on his tv turned up.

Senor says he drove by the sister's house just yesterday and there was a new old man sitting out front in the chair that I had photographed. So we are confused, well I am confused. Senor says he is not the confusable type. But so far, the little casa remains empty and we do not even see any signs of Jesus' cat, the white one.

I went next door to learn to make flan. I have always had a recipe for it, but it's one of those things that is better done with a person who has done it before. So, I had the opportunity to do that.

I don't blog recipes or food too much, mainly because I have difficulty even following recipes.

But this one was worth it. i think you can make it easily.

You need:

8 eggs

2 cans sweetened condensed milk

2 cans water (use the milk cans for measurement)

1 1/2 cups sugar and 1/3 cup water

2 T kahlua

1 t vanilla

and you need a flan pan, a round baking dish with a hole in the middle

Over low heat, toss the sugar in a pan, add 1/3 cup water. Stir this Forever! It will get dry. It will get lumpy. It will get clumpy. You will think you need to add more water. Don't. You are just carmelizing the sugar and it will take forever. Eventually it will get dark dark brown and bubbly. When it does this, pour it into the flan pan and coat the pan and sides.Tony, our flan instructor, asks me if I washed my 8 eggs. Wash the eggs....... i said...........i never wash my eggs. He tells me I have to always wash my eggs, so I wash my 8 eggs. We crack them into a bowl and add the milk and the 2 cans of water. He says his favorite dessert is condensed milk on crackers. I tell him that when I worked at DIF some of the women there drank the condensed milk right from the can.........yum, he says.

We add kahlua and vanilla and beat all of this with the mixer. It gets too foamy so Tony holds the mixer just under the surface of the liquid and it gets creamy again. After a few minutes we pour the mixture into the coated flan pan.

The flan pan then is put into a larger pan, filled halfway with water and put into the oven for 1 1/2 hours at 350 degrees. More water is added during the cooking time to keep this water bath halfway up the flan pan.

The flan comes out of the oven and sits on the counter for several hours while Tony shops and my friends and I go off to buy art supplies at an art sale in someone's home.

At the art sale, I hear that La Victoria, which is Carroll O'Connor's Alamos home, has been sold, along with eight other proerties in town. Baby boomers are coming, says someone.

Indeed, on the way home, the front door of La Victoria is open and I snap a few photos. La Victoria needs a lot of love and care, so I am glad someone has bought it. I want to ask if I can go inside, but there are workers milling around and the flan is waiting on the countertop.

The flan is ready to come out of the pan. A knife is run around the edges and then, the pan sits in another water bath, this one warm with tap water. Tony jiggles the flan until it starts to move around in the pan.
Then in a very swift move, the pan is turned upside down.




And, we have flan. Isn't that pretty?

Gotta run, need to be over on Loma Gudalupe by ten o'clock. I am doing some custom glass tiles for someone there and we need to discuss the plan.

Que le vaya bien!......which when translated, means roughly, may you have an interesting life or may all things turn out well for you. Linda Lou

Feeling Good

Buen Dia.



I am happy to report that I feel better. I start my Spanish class manana and am eager to get out of the casa, and to the mercado, to the post office, and to see someone other than Cookies or Senor or Umberto.




This is Wednesday and finally bridge has started up again, so I am home alone. It is a beautiful fall feeling day, a nice breeze, not too hot sun, parrot chattering in the distance, horse neighing across the street, rooster crowing in the old tequila factory. Just an all around nice day.


I don't think much work has been done around here while I was sick. Although Senor would probably be insulted to read that. Let me just say, I do not see that alot of work has been done. But there is, of course, alot that I do not see. Umberto took alot of days off, about six total, for parties and Senor continued working, doing one person things.


After going out just now, for a quick yard and casa tour, this is what I see that maybe you have not seen.


A roof is going up on the little house where the pump is. It is also where the propane tanks will go, you know, the sort of tank that helps to HEAT water.

You can see the pump inside, all lonely, wishing it had other things like a HOT WATER heater to keep it company.

Now on the exact opposite side of the house, cement has been poured and rebar constructed. This is where the adobe wall will start and it will eventually meet up with the coyote fence I am working on.

Before I got sick, I finished the coyote fence across the back.

And I started the one alongside the yard that will meet up with the adobe wall. We have a huge yard as you can see.

I also moved all of the glasspondstudio into the little room I now call the Ian Room. Everything is in there except the kilns, which are still in the bathroom. I am hoping it will keep me better organized until I can get the whole thing out into the stable one of these days.

Glass is all sorted and labeled which helps me make similar items of certain colors. I am currently making a set of six tiles for someone, in colors of lavendar and purple. Every piece of glass turns a different color after it is fired, so everything has to be color coded both before and after firing.

Don't let all those loose electrical wires and things bother you. They are all dead, or something like that, whatever Senor calls them.......or dead until he turns them on................. I thought about making a Christmas card showing all those wires and sending it to the King County Executive Offices next year and then I decided they would either not get the joke, or would try and figure out who sent it so they could fine that person for having all these wires exposed.

All this glass competes with the washing machine and the styrofoam for the roof, and some chairs we bought at a bazaar, but it all works.

I am happy to report that Cookies has a new friend. New old Jesus' cat has been hanging out here alot. Now, this is not something we encourage nor do we discourage it. We are certainly not feeding it and calling out.........................here, kitty, kitty.

But I sense a little loneliness in Cookies. I know he misses batting Ashes' tail or swatting her in the head with his paw, and he misses laying down, right up against her and placing his paw over her neck.

When I was finishing up the back coyote fence I saw Cookies and new old Jesus' cat back in Jesus' yard. They were sitting side by side, doing nothing. Then Cookies got up and walked around a bit, and Jesus' cat followed. They twitched their tails in all the same places, sniffed in all the same places, scratched in all the same places and I thought....oh, no, a fight is coming.

But then, they sat down again, side by side, doing nothing. Cookies rolled over, Jesus' cat rolled over, Cookies yawned, Jesus' cat yawned. I was very surprised. Soon Cookies walked to the fence to get back in, but I had already closed it up with the very last varro blanco and was wondering if I should have left an opening.

Eventually both cats found their way into the yard, but when Jesus' cat saw me, he ran off.

I do not want another cat, but if Cookies wants to take care of Jesus' cat that is just find with me.

Maybe I will feel better leaving Cookies here and taking a trip somewhere. Cookies will have a friend to keep him company.

In the meantime, it is nice to be feeling good again. I think this is the first cold I have had while we have been here and I hope it is a long time before I get another. It is nice to do dishes, sweep the floor, cut some glass, water the plants, cook some food.

Last night, Senor commented......................it is real nice to smell someone else cooking my dinner. Now if we broke that down grammatically, we would have to make some changes. Either that or he needs to start going down to the Dolisa RV Park, like I do, for hot showers. I laughed pretty hard, but I knew what he meant................

New old Jesus' white cat.................adios, linda lou

Quiet Hardworking Creatures

There are some sneaky, tricky little quiet things out there. They are everywhere. They do not make any noise. You never know when they will just be right in the yard where you just walked and didn't see them. You never know if there will be just one or a hundred. Then, suddenly they are everywhere.

There is a product sold at the local feed store. I call it food. It is for the big ones and it looks like rabbit pellets.

I put my hand inside a baggie and push the pellets down into the hole. If they are on top of things, which they generally are, they will begin pushing the pellets right back out. It then becomes a type of war between us.

A manufactured powder is helpful, it is meant to be spread around plants you do not want devoured. But I spread it around the holes, and then they will not come out. They just move a little farther out into the yard. I feel that if I can just keep pushing them back to new old Jesus' little casa, I will be successful.

Senor says.......don't you know, all of Mexico is probably built on top of one big connected underground tunnel .....there are little condos here in Sonora and when they want, they travel cross country to visit friends and so on and so on.

This is just not a good vision to me.........the thought of Mexico collapsing into a big hole. So, I keep fighting the quiet little things and trying to push them at least, out of our yard and into the next. When they come back, I start all over again. Who knows, if they get tired of my endless activity against them, maybe they will go and visit their cousins in Arizona.

So, Wednesday night Senor told me to come and look at something. He said I would probably like it very much and should bring my camera. It was a very quiet evening and the moon had just come up over the hill. There were no tuba notes drifting through the streets, no accordians playing in the wind and no bongo drums in the distance, no cars , horses or skateboards going up or down the street, just some very, very quiet hardworking creatures..................................

The Building Inspector

Buen Dia!



This is Senor's little corn patch. He is a Minnesota boy and thinks he can find a way to grow good sweet corn here in Mexico. I cannot help but laugh at that..........So far, he has planted four packages of corn seed that he smuggled across the border in his pants pockets.
He has ten plants.Yesterday morning was terribly hot. I stayed inside working on a glass project, but Senor was out in it all morning. We have a new thermometer and a rain guage. Senor kept coming in to give me temperature reports.
It just reached ninety..............but the humidity is only forty. It feels very dry...................................I went out only long enough to get some photos because our son called and said he wanted to see photos of the progress.....Hi Ian!!!!!! here are some photos!!!!!!



Below I am standing inside the bedroom door and looking east. This will be the farthest end of the portal. But there has been alot of progress here.



You can see the varro blancos which are called so many different names here. They all look the same to me, but these are the varro ones......they will go in a diagonal pattern between the vigas of the roof.



Out in the yard is a huge pile of these under a tarp. The delivery guy called those palo blancos, but they look the same. Those will become the fence.Here you can see the palo blancos in the background, beyond the person, who happens to be Senor, but looks like an escaped gorilla..............sometimes I will be taking a photo and Senor just walks right into the scene. He does not pay any attention to the fact that I was there first, just trying to take a nice photo.


As I said, alot of work has been going on at this end of the portal.



The pvc inside the rebar will carry the rain water off the roof and down into the pipe.Eventually the pipe will flow into a new cistern that will be dug below it.







If you walked straight ahead, west, and around the corner of the casa, you would see that the trench for laying the new pipes from inside the casa to the sewer system in the street has been dug.







Below the pipe and in the trench, is the little septic system box. All kinds of things float from the white pipe, out of the bathrooms, through this little cement holding area and then, through an even larger pipe out to the sewer pipe. Isn't that interesting?



Senor says that the septic box is very important. If I should accidentally flush a baby diaper or something down the toilet, he would be able to get into the box, stick a long stick up into the pipes there and push or pull the baby diaper farther out into the larger sewer pipe or retrieve it and throw it away in the garbage which is what should have been done in the first place...........see, that is interesting especially since we don't have any baby diapers around here to throw away or accidentally flush.



But Senor likes me to know these things.............just in case. That is just a little trickle of clean water flowing through the pipe in the photo below....in case you are wondering about that black smudgy looking thing. So, I just walked around and took pictures of things Ian might be interested in seeing......below I asked Senor to turn and smile for the camera, but he ignored me completely. Umberto is trying to get as far as he can into the hole where the pipes go into the casa. They would not let me take a photo of that and pretty much without saying it, told me to get lost.........



Around three, the sky darkened to the south and west, and the temperature dropped a little, so I stayed out and took a few more photos.



Below you can see, the floor beams have been laid for the portal floor. You can see the Hilton Garden Room and the door that leads to the kitchen, which as you know, is not really a kitchen.
Look! There is new old bike!!!!! And a very nice shot of the tinnaco. You can also see the storm coming from the south.

Where you see the bike and garden room............... that area will all be enclosed, but will open through windows and doors to the new portal. The wall between the garden room and the kitchen door will come down and so will the wall behind the garden room and another inside. That big space will all become one big sala!.............................eventually.

By now, the sky is very dark and there is no doubt we are in for a huge storm.

Senor sent Umberto home and got a good shot of Senor Rojo, his hair flying in the wind.

Then, suddenly the storm from the south slammed us with heavy wind and rain and a great light and sound show. Cookies ran to hide under a chair, but Ashes was caught out in it.

After an hour and a half, the yellow light came out and there was alot of standing water.

I was disappointed that it had stopped. But the temperature dropped into the eighties and there was still a good breeze.

So, I took more pictures.

A beautiful rainbow came out........every rainbow we see is in this same place, arching north to south.

But the sky was still dark and out of the west came a huge crack of thunder and a brand new storm, even more spectacular than the first one. Senor got caught inside for this one and his umbrella was outside. So I watched from the portal and he read his book in the bedroom. Cookies stayed under the chair and Ashes made it into the garden room, still wet from the first storm.

When it was done, we saw the sunset and another rainbow, but a double, in the same exact spot as the first rainbow.

Then, and I am not kidding, the storm came in again, this time from the north. We could see the lightning coming and could hear the thunder. This storm was quieter and never got too close, but we did get a gentle rain that continued to fall into the night hours.

Throughout the earlier heavy rains I thought several times about my new rain guage which was sitting on the table.

This morning is slightly overcast and Senor has poured a new concrete cover for the little septic system box.

Earlier he came in and said the building inspector had stopped by.

My heart sank. I did not think we had a building inspector here in Alamos.

In our Washington State county you could not say those two words without paying money.

The very last thing I want is to deal with a building inspector.

So, of course, I began probing Senor.......what did he look like..............what did he want........i did not know we had a building inspector...............ugh, is everything okay.............. did he fill out any papers?...............good grief, i hope he doesn't come back often...............







i got a picture of him........ said senor......................................... you can take a look.........................you took a picture of the building inspector, i said....................why?...................i took two, said senor.............two pictures, omg, of the building inspector?

ha ha...........said senor.

adios.......said linda lou.