Manos Verdes

Domingo 10- Sábado 16 Noviembre   A delicious start to this week with a nice dinner at Ania and Frank's. A celebration of Carmen's birthday with chayote soup and an adobo chicken with mexican rice course. We just love Ania's cooking, and she always takes so much care with presentation. We played four games of double dominoes. As we left Ania gave us some cut anthuriums that we put in the vase with the carnations we had purchased. She also gave us several stalks of a very interesting dried prickly plant from Veracruz. They are now over one of our living room windows, yet to be id'd. Also a couple of plant macrame hangers that her daughters had made. She does not hang items on her walls like we would, so she thought we could make use of them. And right she was. The hangers are in the living room with different types of prayer plants, which seem happy!

By Monday, Carmen had run out of the antibiotic to treat her arm, still a bit swollen, so we walked into town to buy another course of pills at a local pharmacy. We figured this would be quicker than going back to IMSS for a new prescription. Turned out that purchasing antibiotics takes a doctors prescription – can't just buy it over the counter like one used to be able to do here. Other than antibiotics and narcotics, all medicinal drugs can be bought over the counter on demand. The Similares (Generics) pharmacy has a small clinic, staffed with a doctor, attached to the store. On the wall is a list of services provided, with very reasonable prices. We explained the situation to the doctor, showed him the drug packaging we got from IMSS, answered some questions on how Carmen was faring, and he wrote out a receta (Rx) for another week of treatment. For this service we paid MX$30 (US$2.30). Next door, in the farmacia we bought the dicloxacillin, which here cost a tenth of what it would have been in the states. It was perfect weather for the walk, and we were happy to get the exercise!

Carmen spent most of this week exercising her manos verdes (green hands, ie "green thumbs"), planting new acquisitions and caring for them. This included potting up the little start of the Reina de Noche or Pitahaya (Hylocereus undatus, Night-blooming Cereus, Dragon Fruit) Celia provided, for which we have high hopes for fantastic flowers and delicious fruit. The plant is supposed to be a fast grower, which we will have to trellis against our south terraza wall. It seems everything here grows at warp speed, including not only wanted plants, but also weeds and insects. Dan spent some long hours perusing the internet, identifying plants we have growing here, and creating some online albums of plants of which we have good photos. There are links to our foto pages near the bottom of the navigation column to the right of this blog page. Frank reported that google maps just updated it's coverage in Fortín, adding street views of both the calle and avenida for the corner where we live. These are dated August 2012, the month before we arrived here with our furniture, so the house appears just as we purchased it, before any of our house renovations and painting.

Thursday, we picked Ania and Frank up at their house and took them to catch their bus in Orizaba, going to the airport in Mexico City, the first leg of their vacation. We are still wondering if they caught the bus for which they had tickets, since they got to the station only minutes before departure time. We had needed to go to Orizaba for foam for our bench seat in our bedroom. The foam shop was closed between 2 and 4, as many businesses are, and that was the time we got there after the stop at the bus terminal. To fill our time, we wandered about a bit in the downtown business area. Always an enjoyable walk in this beautiful old city. We also strolled the big mercado, which has hundreds of stalls selling about every imaginable item. Lots of interesting sights and smells, as markets of this kind are heaped with produce of all kinds, as well as raw fish and freshly butchered hanging meats, all mixed with cooking odors from many dining stalls.

Stores proffered large discounts for this weekend – “El Buen Fin” (the good weekend) is the third year of holding this mexican equivalent of the Black Friday weekend following Thanksgiving. Next Wednesday will be Mexico's Dia de la Revolución, but the holiday is celebrated monday, extending the shopping weekend into a four-day friday-monday affair. Yes, we just could not resist a good buy. Off to Home Depot to buy a small supplementary hot water heater to put in near the kitchen sink. We have been holding onto the old 38 liter storage-type heater we removed when we built the new bathroom, but realized we would be better served with a newer fast recovery de paso model (heats 6 liters of water almost immediately and continuously). Our main water heater is at the opposite end of the house and it takes long minutes to get hot water to the kitchen faucet. Being that Carmen is most impatient, and much extra water is used just draining the cool water in the lines before it turns hot, we decided to put this second water heater in. While at the store we also bought more soil and pots.

What a day saturday! Seemed like the whole town was stopping by to talk to us or sell us something. By 9am we had purchased 2kg of freshly dug red potatoes, an orchid in full bloom (Laelia anceps anceps) with an asking price of MX$120 (but Carmen really does not want any more orchids, so she firmly held out while the seller's price dropped over and over, until she relented and paid MX$50), plus more plants from Carmelo. We must have one of nearly every plant that Carmelo grows! Such a variety! Thruout the rest of the day there were folks asking for money and food or work. We never give money – only food. Our fresh flower man again had beautiful long stemmed flowers, but we did not need any this week. Our last week's carnations were still healthy. Folks ringing the bell included some with questions about the old water heater we now have for sale and people looking for some other address.

During a typical week, many vendors pass down the street, hoping to sell: unfinished small furniture, pillows, coconuts, fresh herbs, garlic bulbs, fruits, avocados and many homemade items like breads, tamales, desserts, pickles, etc. There's also the man with a bicycle cart selling fresh raw milk right out of the steel milk can (the kind that farmers in US used in the past). And services like the knife sharpener, the motorcycle-riding postman, and the guys that drive around wanting to buy scrap metal. Then add in the regular domestic deliveries of bottled water and propane (at least three brands of each have customers in this neighborhood), and commercial deliveries to the little house-front abarrotes (grocery-sundry shops), at least one in every block. On and on the list goes,and many varieties of just about anything one can think of, will eventually come to our door with the hopes of a sale. Not all of these sales people passed by saturday, but any typical week most of these vendors will be seen. And most of them just walk past hawking their wares, without ringing doorbells or knocking, depending on residents to hear them pass and come out if they are interested in buying.

Oh yes – there is the saxophone man, and occasionally a three-man conjunto of musicians. They come by playing a few bars of music, up and down the streets, hoping for an appreciative tip! Plus all the folks just walking past who have a smile and hello makes for a rich full busy life here. The weather has been delightful, the various cold fronts (we're expecting number 14 this next weekend as I am writing this) bringing in very sleepable nights (not so cool that the bedroom window isn't open all the time) and mid-70's sunny days.  Dan is speaking more extensively to folks, which pushes his learning (finding the correct verb tenses and using those pesky relational pronouns), making it that much easier to keep conversation flowing.  Vocabulary has never been much of a problem for him, but then there are those subjunctive tenses to stumble over too. All in time...!