Polinizando a mano

(Domingo 18 - Sábado 24 Agosto) 

Dan started the week out by hanging up the new ceiling fan in the bedroom, assembling it and hooking it up to replace the single bulb overhead light that was there. This was no small job. The cathedral ceiling slants and is supported by sloping beams. Carmen planted some new plants outside and indoors. While sitting on the upper deck doing spanish lessons, Smij was being curious about the stairs leading to the mirador, so Carmen carried her up there. Gardi was on the top waiting for them. Smij was put down on top of the roof before the level of the mirador, assuming she would go on up with Gardi. Wrong. She spied the enclosed area under the platform and darted under there. She finally crept back out, wide-eyed at the view from the roof to the ground below, and went slowly back towards the steps, Carmen grabbed her and carried her back down the stairs. Gardi literally runs up and down the steep steps (more like a ship's ladder), though he could easily catch a foot and twist it in the open framework of the steps.

While Carmen was out front sweeping the entry area, a lady with four smallish children walked by. Well, actually, the lady bent over to tie a shoe, one child bravely walked up to the gate and said “h e l l o” with the word all stretched out and said very slowly. Carmen mimicked her slow speech and replied in kind, and the little girl giggled and kept repeating the word. Carmen said a few more english words which the girl did not understand, so went back to hello. Eventually the mother got her shoe tied and walked past with the other three children, who all stopped and said “h e l l o”, then giggled. Mother looked on proudly.

A new bird today! What a thrill! We spied on our back fence, a large bright yellow breasted bird. Seemed about the size of a flicker, but in reality, according to all the pictures on the internet, it must be smaller. It has a heavy long bill, a strong white slash over the eye, rather an olive color on the back, white above the tail under the wings, and some white streaks on the outer areas of the wings. Most beautiful. It is either a yellow-breasted chat (Icteria virens) or perhaps a king bird. This bird stays only for a minute or so and has returned for us to admire a few times that we know of. We do not know it's song yet.

Tuesday we walked into town to go to the DIF, etc. On our way on Avenida 7, one of the main streets, when what do we spy? The Google Earth car, a compact auto with a blue globe-like apparatus (the panoramic camera) on the top. The company tends to update the same streets and this street is on Google Earth already, so we expect that one might be seeing us (our backsides) walking west on the sidewalk, near Calle 5, just before coming to the library, cultural center and DIF office.

The young lady at DIF told us they would call us when there was someone there to talk to us, on thursday or friday. Next stop, the Santander bank for auto insurance quotes. The quotes from there and also from the agent Frank uses, were all higher than from the company that we signed with before we crossed the border. We had thought that now that we are here more than six months at a time, we would not be able to insure with this company, however, as long as we are US citizens with a US-plated vehicle, we can insure with them. Coverage is with Qualitas, the same insurer that the agent and the bank quoted to us, but at higher prices.

Now a stop at the Telcel store. Our cellphone needed a refill. Even phones get hungry! The day was ended with hanging the long curtains Carmen and sewn for the closet area along one wall of the smallest bedroom.

Wednesday – Dan built the curtain rods for the north small windows of smallest bedroom and Carmen made the curtains. They are of a beautiful purple, blue and other colors with the look of Guatemalan typical tela. The two large windows on the east side are a medium blue.

The next day the city water commission finally got “done” with the streetside gutter concrete work in front of Valentin's house next door. Will they do the steps that they smashed while repairing his water line? Carmen had a dental appointment and got a small filling put in behind one of her front teeth. It came out when she had a cleaning last week. Cost about US$35, and more care was taken putting it in than Carmen ever experienced NoB.

A note we missed last week. When in Home Depot, there were two fellows checking out ahead of us – setting up a new wholesale account. According to the shirts they were wearing, they work for a local refinery, but according to the shirt logo, also a part of the Domino brand. The sugar is apparently made here and shipped north in large quantities for repackaging. So now we know where our favorite sugar comes from. The only brown sugar we have found here so far, however, is coarse and granular, not the fine and soft of the north.

Friday dawned sunny, and we took advantage to hang clothes out to dry, and to freshen up items that had been in the closet for a while. We really love having our clotheslines on pulleys outside our upstairs bedroom. So convenient. Walked to DIF, which postponed us again. They will call us next week. Today they got a large shipment of food that they must distribute to the needy. We finally had time to make a tour of the city library. It had books on learning english, but we found no novels in english. Dan found lots of things he'd like to read. We browsed the children's section. Carmen feels she is not ready for any of those except the mostly picture books. She just does not like reading when she has to look up every third word or so. Probably not that bad, but it feels that way.

Needed a few items from the grocery store. Just before there, a man had his wares, flower pots and household ceramics, spread out along the sidewalk. After grocery shopping, we bought a pot which Dan then had to carry home, full of some of the grocery purchases. We both had rather heavy loads to carry the next ten blocks. As we got closer to home we passed a fellow selling fresh grapes, both red and green, for about US$0.70 a pound. A kilo of both kinds added to the load.

All thru the week, Dan has spent time hand pollinating the passion fruit flowers. We had noted that they would bloom and the flower would fall off in a day or two, without setting any fruit. Some online research told us we needed to polinzar a mano (hand pollinate), by brushing the pollen on the stamens to the stigmas which sit above them. This can be done with the fingers, or a small implement like a brush.  A Q-tip works great!  The beautiful delicate flowers last but one day, and we are getting about 4-6 a day.

Carmen made a big buy all by herself this week, right at our front gate. A fellow with an arm load of 20” stem flowers was walking by and she bought a dozen three inch diameter carnations. She even understood what he said to her and counted out the correct change for payment! In her excitement she forgot to bargain, though. Now, she has fumbled through gateside purchases before, but this time she actually understood the words, and they were in spanish.

We finished up the week installing the 20 foot bamboo pole that we had gotten from Frank last week, attaching it with set-off blocks to the tall south wall in the front yard, so the vanilla vine would have something to grip and climb on. In working here on the ladder, Dan bro worked in the afternoon sun for an hour or so, weeding along the avenida edge on the north of our property, and came inside sweat- soaked and exhausted. It was a good day, all plants weeded and fertilized, roadside cleaned up, everything looking good.
ke off the top of the plant. It will recover, but he was quite depressed by the accident. Carmen promptly started propagating the 18” piece in a pot, so hopefully we'll have another plant to gift someone later. We both