De lluvia y flores

(Domingo 16 - Sábado 22 Junio ) 

Isn't life great when you are busy busy busy! Sunday morning, and Carmen wants to buy plants and make our small garden areas beautiful! Ania had said that she would give us a start of an asparagus fern, so we called her and invited ourselves to their home to get this plant, in spite of the fact that she had a bad cold sort of thing. We just knew that she would feel better with a visit from us, though this might not have been the case. Turns out that the best fern was amongst poison oak. No thank you, but there were more. We ended up soaking a pot (so that we could pry the plants out) that had both the Sprenger's fern that we wanted for a hanging basket in our new bathroom, plus a lace fern that is now outside near the car gate, plus a Murraya paniculata (mock orange, orange jasmine,) which is now happy planted in our petite front yard. We also got Trevetia ahouai (Nariz de payaso or Clown's Nose plant, aka Bishop's Balls) which is not doing well, plus a ground cover, Saxifraga stolonifera, that is actually potted near the asparagus fern in the bathroom. Dan built a shelf for plants, near the ceiling under the skylight for a small Cabeza de Negro, which will send it's leafy vines up into the skylight well.

On our way home we stopped by a little nursery that sells trees and shrubs, plus ground covers. Here we bought a four foot tree with longish branches and covered with the most beautiful flowers. Turns out this is a Bauhinia monandra, down here called a Pata de cabra for the shape of the light-green leaves (“goat's foot”), but you might know it as an Orchid Tree. Also we purchased a small Pata de elefante plant (Beaucarnea recurvata), which you might know as a Ponytail Palm, although it's not a palm at all. These grow slowly can can become very large, but can be maintained small when potted.  We were back home we then realized it was Fathers Day, but no one had called during our outing.

We thought it best to dash out to the floral market area in town right away for a quick trip to be back home by the time Dan's daughters might be calling. Several purchases here. First we spied a passion fruit vine (Passiflora edulis), with it's most beautiful delicate purple-blue blooms. (We inserted a picture of this flower in the last post.)  Dan had been searching for one for a while, and is already anticipating having his own crop of these tasty fruits (around here called maracuyá, but in Guatemala he bought this refreshing fruit as a granadilla, “little grenade”). Next were purchased two Mandevilla vines, one white (aka Chilean Jasmine) and one a rosey deep pink. All three of these vines are potted on the bedroom terraza level to climb the walls and fence.

We spent a long time deciding on which hibiscus to purchase, which for some reason here in Mexico is called a Tulipán. However, if you look this word up on the internet, all that shows are tulips, a bulb flower we are very familiar with, grown in the Skagit Valley of Washington, and Holland, of course. We finally made a decision, only to have a man pick up the plant just as we were reaching for it. No other of that color. Bought our second choice and so far our chosen spot has not made it happy. Maybe it's in too much sun, or too dry? The bloom is 6.5 inches across, pale magenta with white-orange fringes, with a vivid red-yellow stamen.

A lush lavender-bloomed Plectranthus mona is planted between our palm and plumbago out front. The Pachystachy lutea or golden shrimp plant is still in it's pot. We have high hopes of a finding a special new ceramic pot for it, and will be set on top of our back area grill until it gets big enough to plant behind the car, where we can see it from the living room. We see these wild in the forest edges and they can get up to five feet tall. Then of course there is Carmen's favorite of the moment – the Clerodendrum thomsoniae. This is the Bleeding Heart vine with white flowers with dark bright centers of red. It was a very popular plant in 19^th century Mexico, for it's tri-color appearance of the country's flag. It grew out of favor due to being difficult to maintain in other parts of the country, as it requires shade and lots of water. Hopefully it is happily planted near a north window to grow up on the fence there.

So far the sweet corn we planted does not seem to want to grow. Only three of the nasturtiums have sprouted and the sweet peas are being shy. Our carpenter was here tuesday, thursday and friday, finishing his work. Removing and then refitting our laundry room door after taking it to his shop for painting, fitting & attaching all the various trim pieces that were left off the doors and windows waiting for the walls to be painted, and putting up a shelf in kitchen over the refrigerator space.

A lady came to our gate with a few plants for sale. We really did not want the orchids she had, but she looked so down-hearted, that we bought two. Then Cosme showed up with his glorious mischievous smile with two large bags of plants! What can we do? He laid them all out on the porch and explained the beauty of them all. All 20 or so. We only bought fifteen. Now you must understand that these are very small starts, all epiphytes (manydendrobiums), plus a dark red anthurium. We paid cash for part of them and the rest is credited towards the plywood he will get when we are done with our projects. It was raining the whole time he was here, and he travels by walking and bus! He tied all the orchids that were not already growing on sticks of wood, into the branches of the bugambilia where they look like they took root naturally.

Wednesday we went to the INM (Instituto Nacional de Migración) office in Córdoba to hand in the papers for our permiso to be residents in Mexico. We decided to pay for the next three years at once, which will save us from making two more annual visits like these, and one full year of fees. The fee amounts to about US$150 per year, per person, to be deposited to the INM account at any bank. We did this at the Santander bank but a block away. Went back and handed our papers from the bank to the lady at Migración, only to discover that Carmen's last name was spelled wrong on the receipt. We had to go back to the bank and get that corrected. Back and forth up/down the three flights of stairs, plus stops at the Ofix store across the street for copies, but it all was done in about an hour or so. We assume it will go well, and when we are notified by computer, we will go back to the office and get our plastic coated ID cards. Then we will have 15 days to get to the city of Veracruz, or any other country border entry point, to get our car permitted by the Aduanas (customs office) there for the same period of time. After leaving the immigration office, we went to our family IMSS clinic to get lab and x-ray orders stamped validated (vigencia) for next Monday's hospital visit.

One night we had gone to bed and heard a loud crash. Discovered one of the planters we had hung from the upstairs patio, had fallen onto the ground onto the patio a story below. It was raining and the now wet dirt was everywhere. The plants seemed to be okay so they got replanted the next day. Turns out the weight of the pot, plants and wet soil had sheared off the screws holding the planter braces to the steel railing. Back to the drawing board on that idea!

Talk about lluvia (rain), then there was thursday night! It had been raining for two days, rather steady and at times quite hard. Around nine pm, just having commented on the downpour outside and how pleasant it was inside, dry and in bed reading, when Carmen noticed Gardi cat, who was lying beside her, looking over the edge of the bed. Assuming she would see a bug, she also stretched her neck that way. And much to our surprise, it was no bug! It was a rapidly rising covering of water on the floor!!!! The water was just about to go down our inside stairway, and was in all three bedrooms and bath. Actually we got the long squeegee from downstairs and Dan, at this point totally drenched from clearing the outside drain, ran back and forth pushing water out the door, back onto the terraza. Furniture that we could lift got put up on wood slats to help dry. Thank goodness for our curious cat! Dan had discovered that the drain on the deck outside the bedroom was covered with a plastic plant saucer, so the terraza had turned into a small lake, backing up the slight slope and into the bedroom! What a mess, but at least the floor got a good mopping!

The rain was so hard that it absolutely took one's breath away to be out in it to clear the drain, and to squeegee the water across the terrace towards the drain! Seems that we experienced our first real tropical storm – Barry! When constructed, Dan's idea for the terraza had been to build that surface one step down from the bedroom level, but interfacing everything with the existing levels in the laundry room and lower floor door & window lintels, moved that surface, when the slab was poured, to almost the same level as the bedroom,. This works fine as long as the drain across the deck is not covered or clogged. We did bring some empty “flood bags” from the US, to fill with sand and use at our front entrance where we had seen water pouring down the roadway. Maybe we had best get some of them filled, though the front yard was in okay shape after the storm, to use in the future for emergencies like this. And maybe a small sill in the doorway would be a good idea? Or a scupper off the terrace to complement the 4” floor drain?

Saturday started with sunny skies, the first we had seen for days. We had been cooped up, so we decided on a shopping trip thru town – on foot – looking for a flower pot or two for a couple of the plants we purchased this week. There is a sizable shop with large ceramics near where the railroad track crosses the Fortin-Cordoba boulevard, but we feel they are costly there. When we visited it a year ago, the lady tending shop apparently thought us to be dumb tourists who would pay outrageous prices. At any rate, we walked around Fortín, from the southeast corner where we live, around and about to the northwest corner just short of the autopista, and back of course, in search of large ceramic flower pots. Did not find any. We did stop at the gate of the nursery again, but it was closed. Also strolled all the passageways thru the public market, the small and large stalls stocked many things, but no garden items. We saw and spoke to our welder, who was having a chat with friends on the other side of town. Our only purchase this day was at a coffee roasting company that we found NW of downtown. One the way home we chanced by a lot where some trees had been cut down.  Here we found some branches from a bougainvillea that we lugged home and wired up to one of the concrete porch columns.  We tied many of our small epiphytes here, a good home for these blooming air plants.  Was perfect weather for such a stroll and a bit of garden work! But, the leftovers from tropical storm Barry poured down again in the late afternoon and off and on into the night.

Dan has been making a list of plants on this small piece of property (family, latin/english/spanish name, characteristics, location, link to webpage). It will be interesting to see how many we can squeeze in!