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.

Need Help

Buenos dias!
I need blog help. I can no longer move my photos and adjust them to where I want them to be in the text. I can't click on the picture and move it nor can I move it when editing the Html.
Any thoughts would be appreciated. We recently had someone work on our computer and not much has been the same since. Many of my pages pop up in Spanish and I have tried to correct this to no avail. A number of things I used to be able to do just can't be done anymore.

Moving photos around is very important to a blog post and it is annoying because there is so much I want to show you and now, it will really be the quite the jumbled up mess. So stay with me and maybe someone will tell me how to solve this problem and my next post will then be more organized and you will be able to follow it more easily.

We are having a very dry spell. Water rationing is going on big time. Since I am the water girl, it is important to stay on top of the rationing and keep everything from dying off. Some of our established plants, like the beautiful old plumeria above don't need much water, but our new palms and younger plants need it often.

Days have been warm and windy, with some cloud cover and that helps the water situation, but last week there were so many times when I went out to water only to discover, there was no city water coming in and not much water left in the cistern, which only holds about 600 gallons.

Since I am an early riser, I put myself in detective mode and began to figure out the city system for turning on the water. This must be for the entire city because I imagine one valve somewhere, at some building somewhere, where one person goes and just opens it or shuts it, water on, water off.

The water is coming on very early, maybe before five am. It is turning off around nine am. So, if you have a cistern and the city water feeds automatically, you are good to go. Like us, if it does not feed automatically, you have got to be on top of it in order to turn on your connection to the city water to fill your cistern. If you don't have a cistern or a tinnaco, you are only getting water straight into your house during those hours.

So, I am up early every morning to turn on the city water and fill the cistern so we have plant water and water for concrete or other construction purposes. I am not a water waster, so this all makes me appreciate the way Senor is constructing the roof to catch rain water......someday.

I am also glad we have our washing machine set up as it is to send the gray water to many of the plants between the casa and the adobe street wall. For example, the plants below are flourishing because they get the run off and I seldom water them.



Now this is the snarly part about the photographs. Here below you will see Umberto is chipping away at the ladrillos so Senor can put in all of the electrical outlets for the kitchen to be............this photo does not go here.................
Then here you will see the pretty clouds from yesterday.....................
Then here is the cistern again. That white pipe connects to the drain from the washing machine, so it pretty much turns into a small pond in this area when we do laundry.


And here you will see how nice all of this looks. You can see Senor at the gate and by the way, he is playing bridge three times this week. He said...........is that ok? Well I say as long as you are working on the house in the mornings that is fine. So, here he is busy, very hard at work, buying tamales from the little boys who come around every morning.
Oh, and now you will see a beautiful palm frond. That photo of a new shoot signifies that even though we are on water rationing, we are managing to keep our plants healthy and happy.
And here you can see into the cistern which I am filling as I write. And now what I have to say is I hope someone else is experiencing this blogger problem and can help me get back to being able to move my photos around or I will go crazy.
So enough for now. I welcome all advice. Saber es poder...............knowledge is power............over the blogpost.

This L Shaped Space

Buen dia!!!

Look at our Fuego (fire ) tree. The leaves of these trees are lacy long fingers that float up and down and sway back and forth in the breeze. They remind me of hula girl skirts.

They make brilliant fire colored orange and yellow flowers that begin as soft green balls on the leaves. Our trees are slightly over a year old and to have one come into bloom so soon is really exciting. The L shaped area where this particular fuego lives is sun filled, so we think that is why it has bloomed first. None of the others, which get half of this one's sun, show any signs of blooming.

Look through the columns below to the white plastered wall way out at the end of the yard.

here it is a little closer.......................you can see the stable is to the right.

a little closer..............the pine tree from Christmas before last is there..................the truck cab is there..............................a huge old mesquite hangs over the wall................

this is an old area......................... L shaped, outlined by old over sized and uneven bricks, but the plastered wall is strong.........................

In the last photo below, looking back to the casa...........you can see the L shape is a distance away......there is no winter sun here............and very hot in the summer................

what to do with this area..................any suggestions?

Manana we go to Hermosillio to renew our FM3. The renewal routine has been changed. As of April 30th, one must go online and fill out an application, submit it online and print the application and take it to the Immigration office. Supposedly, we do not need copies of our bank statements or utility bills any longer, but I just spoke with a friend who went last week to renew at the Guaymus office and did not take those things with her. She had to return to Alamos, gather those things and go back to Guaymus. We are not taking any chances..............everything but the kitchen sink goes with us manana.

So, I went online to fill out the applications. I did Senor first. After filling out the application, I chose guardar (save) and his application disappeared. A number popped up on the screen along with a message telling me to save this number. So I wrote it down.

I did my application. Before I hit guardar, I printed it. I hit guardar and got my number.

We also need to take a letter stating that we want to renew and remain in the country. But we have always taken a letter requesting that. We will also be taking our paperwork that shows we have filed our Mexican taxes.

Now Immigration is issuing little green cards that look like drivers' licenses instead of the multi paged little booklets.

We will just see if we can get one for Senor without his application which is lost somewhere in cyberspace..............oh, I will keep you posted..............time for my siesta........ adios, linda lou

The Pantheon

Buen Dia.
It is very hot out, something over a hundred. We are now through working for the day and hibernating in the back room with the mini split.

Senor is getting very good lately about taking photos. I do have to delete some of them because they are out of focus. Sometimes he accidentally takes a video instead and it is usually of his shoes, but he really seems to enjoy looking for the camera and taking a picture now and then.


He took the beautiful sunset below and the first lily bloom. I cannot recall the name of our lilies, but they are night blooming only and live just through the dark. Most are pale white with maroon centers and light streaks of pink on the petals.

Year of the Gun was a bust. The dvd would not even load. Nothing. Nada. Zip.

So we sat out in the dark, in the garden room and listened to the crickets chirp.

This morning I was up at five and on new old bike for a ride out to the Pantheon, which is the cemetery. I detoured through town to check the water level in La Aduana Arroyo and there was a little trickle. The ride took about half an hour because of the detour.

Below are the gates to the main entrance of the Pantheon. I rode all around the cemetery until I found a smaller open gate and went in with new old bike. It became crowded very quickly and as I turned to go put new old bike outside, the caretaker came up to me.

He said something very quickly in Spanish and I said I did not understand and could he speak more slowly. He pantomimed a scene about my bike by shoving something imaginary way above his head and pretending to walk off. I finally realized he was telling me to leave my bike with him to watch because otherwise someone would lift it up and walk away with it.

I shook my head and he followed me outside, where I locked up my bike to the lamp post. He stood over me and watched what I was doing. When I was done he said........tiene usted llave.....do you have the key..............i said, si, senor, tengo llave.....yes, sir, i have the key....................bueno, he replied.

I followed him back through the gate and he started talking and waving his hand through the air. I think he was telling me something about the graves, but I am not sure. He may have been inviting me to sit down for desayuna (breakfast) because he sat down on a grave where he had earlier laid out his tortillas and a little plastic baggie of salsa. He also had a bottle of juice which he offered to me. I do not generally like to decline gifts, but I did.

I said gracias and started walking around the Pantheon.

After a while of looking at graves and names and dates, I came around a rather large stone grave and he was standing right there. I just about jumped out of my skin. It scared me to death. I was already scared because I had seen two large gravesite holes about eight feet deep with nothing in them.

He smiled and asked me something. It was difficult to understand him. He didn't have any teeth, but I think he was asking me who I was looking for. I asked him where the foreign graves were located. He walked ahead of me, through alot of tall grass, to the opposite side of the Pantheon. We went up a slight incline and near the top he turned and smiled a very toothless smile and said................aqui. Then he turned and left me alone.

I was fascinated by what I saw and read. I counted at least fifteen gravesites with what I will call American names since I don't know the true heritage of any of the names. Even more fascinating were the dates of birth. Many of those birthdates were from the late 1800's and the deaths ranged from the 1960's to the 1980's.

Some of the graves had names that are still familiar here in Alamos, where relatives still live. And there are probably even more gravesites of foreigners that I did not see.

A very popular club here in Alamos, is the History Club. I believe I have read that they have all of the facts for all of the graves. I think it would be very interesting to know more. While looking at some of the graves, I could only imagine what it must have been like here in Alamos, when they were alive. There are a number of books on life as it was here years ago. I will definately have to read some of those.

I brushed against a tree branch while I was walking and a swarm of little honey bees came out of the branch. I scooted away as fast as I could, waved goodbye to the caretaker and went and unlocked new old bike.

When I rode away I couldn't help but think about the graves in the Pantheon. Last year's Day of the Dead came on the heels of Hurricane Norbert. We went to the Pantheon for a short while one night. Very few people were sitting with their departed loved ones. There was very little celebration.

I think people were still in shock and in awe of what Norbert had done. Maybe this year's Day of the Dead will be a merrier, happier time for the town and the Pantheon residents as well.

Happenings in the Yard

Buen dia!

Last night we had two very different evening skies.

The photo above is the eastern sky.

Immediately after in the photo below and across the street, is the western sky.Alot has happened in the yard in the last week.

The grass and weeds grew.

There are very few brown patches of tierra in the yard now.

The amapa tree is full of leaves.

It is in the center of the photo where Umberto is shoveling sand. Last year it did not have any leaves, but it did have one lonely lavendar flower. Beneath it is the big bushy limon tree. The plumerias are on the edges of the photo. And I am standing alongside the big palm tree.

The gardenia bush bloomed.

It has had buds for two months and they just kept drying up and falling off.

It smells so wonderful.

The limon tree by the amampa has bloomed again.

It is covered with hundreds of tiny fragrant white blossoms.

There is another limon tree back by the big palm.

I wish I could send you the smells.

The rabbit garden has new ears.

Flopsy
with her new baby ear on the left

Mopsy

with her new baby ear, also on the left

Peter

standing guard at the back gate

Two butterflies were mating in the limon tree.

I took twenty-five photos and only one was in focus.

A mama quail came to visit.

Senor took these photos of the quail. Isn't she beautiful?

He took about twenty-five photos and they are all in focus.

It was hard to choose which photos to show you.

Below, the quail is watching Senor.

Senor planted three types of corn in his new garden plot on July 1st.

They are already about four inches high. In the photo he has dug little holes around the baby stalks to loosen the hard dirt.
A second, smaller plot behind this one has melon seeds in it.

So, we are off to Tucson later this morning. The furniture is supposed to arrive early or late Friday or early or late Saturday. This is the first time we have used movers for anything.

Don't they know people have things to do, schedules to keep, crops to plant, butterflies and cactus to photograph? Grass to mow? Sunsets to watch? Quail to feed?

Seems like they should be able to say.........10am Friday or 3pm Saturday. I know I am probably wrong, there are all kinds of delays on the road for a mover. But I hate to leave my gardenia plant! Senor hates to leave his corn!

What if we come back Sunday or Monday and the corn has already got corn and the quail are eating it?

So, instead we will each be running to the truck, trying to beat each other to the drivers side. This will happen each time we get out and back into the truck, all the way to the last time we get out and in before the border crossing. I want to drive across the border crossing without getting so upset at the hawkers. I will feel more in control if I am driving. Senor wants to be the driver. In my last border crossing post I said we will flip for it. I will not be happy if I lose. Senor will not be happy if I win.

I have a baby shade on my 'Tucson To Buy' list. I am still planning to write NO, GRACIAS on the outside with a big black sharpie and pull it down when we get to the hawkers. That will help for future border crossings. But for this crossing I think I will just write it on a piece of paper and tape it to the window.

When we get back I plan to show you that we only need sixteen more beams before we get the roof on. It will go fast, like the happenings in the yard, I hope.

Senor says we are leaving in fifteen minutes. Ha! He is not even packed.

YES! I will beat him to the truck!

All is Quiet Here

Buenos Dias! You can see the rain is coming late yesterday, but Bill and I took a walk anyway, certain we could beat it home. Sure enough, we got home as the first little sprinkles began and Cookies was still in his usual hide out. He thinks he is invisible in there. Whenever anyone comes over (and he can not get in the bedroom quickly enough) he jumps up in here and thinks no one can see him. When we have to return to Tucson, I will throw a sheet over the table so he can truly hide..................... of course, we hope no one comes to visit while we are gone..................

This was a big rain, but oddly enough, no thunder and no lightning. Just alot of rain coming out of the canalis and afterward, huge globs of mud all over the yard. In the middle of the photo you can see how the weeds and grass are now coming up and soon our yard will be emerald green in color.

On July 4th, I mowed the lawn. It was about four inches high and it was still about that high when I was done. I did not lower the blade enough and really was not paying any attention as I mowed. That is a huge zone out time for me. By tomorrow, the grass will be around eight or ten inches high, so I will do it again.....

We are still waiting to hear about the election outcome here in Alamos.

By Friday night, all was quiet. We thought we would be seeing huge last ditch efforts by all parties: fireworks, parties, speeches, food and balloons, but there was nothing. The liquor sale ban went into effect at 12:01am, Saturday morning and town was very quiet.

It was even more quiet on Saturday, July 4th, night, and while we celebrated and had a great dinner with friends, the rest of town seemed to be sleeping. We were told there was no more campaigning and even television ads had been discontinued. When we drove home, not a soul was on the streets. Our truck and the truck of fellow dinner guests were the only moving vehicles we saw.

On Sunday, there were long lines of people at the various election stations. I walked to town twice, once to find the store I needed to visit, closed and again, just to see what was going on.

Right before dark, we drove to our favorite video store. People were everywhere. They were milling around the alameda, drinking limonadas, eating ice cream at the plaza. There were a few new vendors around the plaza that I have not seen before. people were still in long lines to vote.

Last night was very quiet and we watched our movie out in the garden room while the water pooled around us.

This morning I walked to town and there was hardly anyone in town. All very quiet. No celebrating going on, no one jumping up and down in the streets for joy. Even the dogs were quiet. The birds, who could care less, sang all night.

If you go to the Alamos Portfolio link, on 'other sites we like', and knock on the portfolio door, click on the history club and then again, on politics, you can read a very interesting account of the PRI and PAN parties during the 1994 election in Alamos. The same two candidates who ran for those parties that year were on yesterday's ballot again, for the same positions. In 1994, this created some hostility and a huge sit-in. We wonder what it will do for this election.

We have heard from others, in their towns, about winning party declarations and celebrations already being held, but it is very quiet here.......

Full House

I have recently noticed that it seems to be the season for giving palm trees haircuts. Monkey, the nickname for the man below wearing the white ball cap, climbing the palm, machete hanging from his belt, has been hanging off alot of trees lately. Monkey gave our palm tree a haircut last August, much to the dismay of a neighborhood who said.................... bats have been living in your palm tree for years, NOW where will they go? Well, most of them just came on inside the casa.A lush, fully loaded palm tree. You can see Monkey inside the branches. He stopped to pose for my camera.These are the four palms he cut this morning. We can see these from the hilton garden room. They look a little bare. Mucho corte de pelo (cut of hair).........i sure hope their bats don't come over here because we already have a full house.