Dia mundial del medio ambiente

Turns out yesterday was World Environment Day.  We learned this after the fact, but as it turns out we had put out for the regular solid waste collection, a large container of clean plastic containers and tin cans we had been accumulating, and Carmen had also policed around the house and up & down the streets a bit, disposing of the scraps of paper and plastic trash blown out of passing vehicles or was discarded by sloppy passers-by.  Here, separation of waste materials takes place right beside the garbage compactor truck, which has bags and boxes strapped or tied to it for plastic, steel, newspapers and the like.  When a container is completely filled with a recyclable material, someone lifts it to the top of the truck where it is tied on.  At the end of the run the truck is quite a sight, covered as it is with bags and stacks of flattened cardboard. Only true mixed garbage goes into the maw of the compactor.  This seems so much more sensible than compacting everything and then picking thru the mess in some centralized recycling facility.

A hard rain again last night and steady all last sunday. However at this time of year the temperature only drops into the high 60s F with the nighttime tormentas. so we leave the windows open except if there are gusts blowing the raindrops thru the screens. Around here, when we get rain it's often accompanied by a bit of (usually distant, 9 seconds away or so) trueno y relampago (thunder and lightning, donner und blitzen).  This kind of sound and light show was very rare in Anacortes, WA, so we're kind of in awe of the spectacle here and beginning to like the dramatic, usually brief, tropical downpours.  At night we often smell the fragrance of whatever orchid is currently flowering.  We've heard that flowers which smell strongest at night are normally fertilized by moths.

We are reminded occasionally that we still live on the Pacific ring of fire.  Every so often we feel the ground tremble.  Not long ago we awoke one morning about 5am with our bed jiggling.  There was a tremor down on the isthmus of Tehuantepec in Oaxaca. No damage to speak of, but it's always unsettling when what is presumed to be solid underfoot, isn't. (It seems that most of the faults that are subject to underground movement are on the Pacific side of the country, most often in the states of Oaxaca and Guerrero.)  Then that same morning at 8am there was a tremendous boom, as a power transformer down the street blew up!   We expected a long period without electricity, but CFE had it replaced in about four hours. 

We finally put a bar along the bottom of our car gate where we saw the gray cat belly-squiggling under. Then a week later we found her sitting just inside our back door discussing who knows what with our own cats – very quietly. Shooed her out and discovered another place that she could squeeze thru. She surely is slender, and gets along well with the other two. We just do not need or can afford another animal, so we blocked that access point off as well.  The animals will just have to visit nose-to-nose thru the gate.

Seems that the zafra (cane harvest) is finished for this season, which means the air is cleaner. We have worked hard getting the black soot off from everything. We are busy “working” on jigsaw puzzles and reading, including the Harry Potter series, borrowed electronically from the Anacortes library, which we have not read before. Our bleeding heart Clerodendrum thomsoniae (flor de bandera) is blossoming beautifully this year.

Things are happening! First and most interesting – Gardi cat found us a salamander. Are they not just the cutest creatures? Long slender bodies with a bulbus roundish head and tiny short stick like legs with toes. This one was medium brown and in our back yard. Actually in a large empty flower pot which Gardi tipped over with a small crash of the ceramic pot. Carmen rescued it and hopefully saved it in some thick plantings.  She notes that american robins are out and about singing the songs we grew up with.  Since Mexico is as far as they migrate south for the winters, the ones we have seen must be stoking up getting ready to wing their way north!

The house construction across the street to the east of our house has been restarted after a five month break of no action. The work and daily progress keeps us entertained. One of the fellows working has a great voice and spends much time singing at the top of his lungs.

From our rooftop we saw some construction happening at the other end of the banana field to our east – well behind the house being built, just about a block away.  When it first started we assumed (as indicated by the city building permit nailed to the wall), that is was a large residence.  To our disconcertion it is actually a storage yard and bodega (warehouse) for storing chicken crates, usually loaded high on parked semi-trailers. No live chickens, but some of the odor is still there! So far we have seldom smelled anything at our house, but there are occasional hints or whiffs of "fragrance" on the breeze.

Our good quiet neighbor, Valentin, to our west has moved out. Bummer. The house is a rental and is now being spruced up. We hope the next tenant speaks English and is quiet, and perhaps this time with no barking dogs. Time will tell.  Also the house to our immediate south (actually used as an office), with which we share a wall, has had no visible activity in it since before Xmas.

Thanks to Homeland Security and Bernie Madoff, BanamexUSA has canceled all of the bank accounts it holds with folks living in Mexico, giving only a month's notice, so we have been scrambling to find the best new arrangement for our banking needs. BanamexUSA was so convenient, providing peso withdrawals by local ATM from our accounts held in California, and charging no international funds access fees. This also means that we must have our social security sent to a different location. Talk about frustrating!!!!

On the way home from our walk into town today, we purchased 17 manila mangoes for US$0.78. The time before we bought a bunch of fresh litchis.  We love the availability of fresh, inexpensive tropical fruit.  When visiting the bank, we walked past a nearby house in downtown Fortín, where we heard and saw two men yesterday sitting on the front porch and speaking english. We were in a hurry at the time so did not stop then, and they were gone later. Will introduce ourselves eventually.

We went to bed one night recently and discovered that part of our upstairs is now lit with a bright new halogen light. We could probably read by this light in the one bedroom. The new light is aimed down Avenida 21, but canted in such a way to illuminate our north wall from the power pole across the street. It will certainly give us more security, and at no cost to us except for a bit of glare! The bedroom we sleep in has curtains heavy enough that the extra light does not bother us, plus it is easier to see when we go to the potty in the night. So, what we first considered to be a bad thing, is actually all good!

We discovered the hugest paper wasp nest (about the size of a soccer ball) we have ever seen near our chimney high up on the north wall outside! We are getting up early in the mornings when the air is as cool as it gets, and spraying with a long jet of insecticide. We now see little wasp activity, and need to eventually get brave enough to knock it down, hoping that the wasps have all departed.

We are getting back into fix-up mode again. Dan put up the toilet paper roller and towel rods in our new bathroom, and also hung a full length mirror and installed a door stop in the tiled floor. Next we sanded off the deteriorating finish on our cedar chest. We have two power sanders, so we could both work at the same time. Had to mix a bit of special stain for some trim strips. Carmen gave the whole chest three coats of new nitrocellulose lacquer.  We also sanded some rough spots on the bed frame we had made for the guestroom, and restained and sealed that too. While we had the lacquer out, we disassembled our queen-sized storage bed John Janda had built for us, and attached padded galvanized steel channel stock on the bottom, to raise the structure about 3/4" off the floor.  When we reassembled things we touched up the surfaces where the shallow flooding coming inside from the terrace had damaged the finish.  The bed is now high enough that it stands completely off the the floor--so no more worries about damaging things from stormwater emergencies or wet-mopping the tiled floor.

We still have many small projects. Dan was going to paint a sealer on a bit of our wall that faces the house to west (where Valentin lived). There are some fellows working there getting ready to repaint that house, so Dan asked if he could go over with our ladder to work on that face of our wall while they were there. The fellow showed up this morning and suggested he could do the application of the impermeabilizante for us.  Dan was happy to pay him, and mark that job off our to-do list.