Más Macetas, Más Flores

Domingo 17- Sábado 23 Noviembre   Dan updated some of our albums on DavesGarden, where he has put categorized fotos of the plants for which we have sure IDs and good pictures. We'll post more here as we work thru our master list of acquisitions, which we maintain on a spreadsheet. We have had comments about them from Colombia, US and Mexico, and answers to our queries about IDing plants from as far away as England. Sunday we drove to Ania and Frank's house to check things out while they are away, and to give their kitty some loves and food.

Lots more plants waiting to be planted, purchased over the last few days from Carmelo. He showed up again monday, bearing ten or so plants, which he peddles around the neighborhood. Despite Carmen saying no more, Dan convinced her to buy two we didn't yet have. Carmelo asked Dan for a loan, to “buy medicine.” No, we do not do that. We have several times given him pesos in advance for a couple of plants that we have not yet received, but that is our limit. Cosme was here about the same time, with a huge bag of orchid and other epiphytes he collected up north. Carmen said no more, but Dan felt he had to buy one, a unique large tillandsia from up by Papantla. A lady came by selling some smaller Hass avocados at a good price, so we bought three and she gave us another—they were very tasty. Now that valencias are coming into season, we bought another 40 pound bag of juice oranges, which proved to be much sweeter than the last bag we bought. Repeated frentes frios (cold fronts) are sweeping down from the states bringing cooler weather, but we see the sun most days.  The butterflies are still around when the sun warms up the air.  Here are two common ones we see often:  Diaetheria anna anna (Anna's 88), a brush-footed butterly, and the other one with iridescent silver/blue wingspots that we haven't yet ID'd.  hey both are about 2" across when wings are spread flat.

Dan has started burning CDs of our LP s and tapes. In Anacortes in the month before we came down here, he had copied well over 180 original recordings, using the shareware Audacity program, and stored the resulting aud files on his computer's hard disk, about 300GB in space that he really needs to free up. It did not make sense to bring the originals down here. Once converted to wav files (which can be burned to audio CDs), he wants to move the aud files into separate storage. We took advantage of the special seasonal sales, and went to Office Depot to buy an external hard disk specifically for storing media files for music, photos and such. A stop at Shattucks where we expected to see Manuel working, but this was a holiday (Dia de La Revolución) and he was not there.  

Tuesday we went to the IMSS hospital outpatient section for Carmen's cita with the ENT department. A nice Dr Cobos, who spoke some english, examined her and found no obvious cause for the dizziness. There is no swelling or apparent infection in the ear area, so the specialist feels the problem might be coming from her neck where she had surgery a few years ago to fuse some cervival vertebrae. Looking acutely up or down can stress her neck, perhaps causing the swelling which is affecting the blood supply to the inner ear. She is totally fed up with the head pain and dizziness! He prescribed a cortizone shot, with the hopes that her dizziness will disappear – there will be a followup with him in a month. The shot was interesting in that she was just given a prescription by the doctor. She had it filled at the hospital pharmacy where the clerk there provided a tiny bottle filled with injectible cortisone. She then had to find someone to give her the shot. Dan offered, but she preferred to go to our IMSS family clinic, where a nurse in the urgencias section used a syringe and gave it to her in the hip. Actually the nurse was a young fellow who looked to be in his teens. He did a really great job of very slowly injecting this thick fluid. We could have also gone to the clinic attached to the farmacia in Fortin, where it would have cost MX$30 for the doc there to do the injection.

From the parking spot near the hospital, we walked on into the center of the city where we went to the Waldos store. It finally has fig bars and those good oatmeal cookies again! Only place we have found them! Also we bought someattractive but inexpensive plastic macetas (flower pots) of various sizes;  we're sure to fill then as it seems we can't seem to have too many pots on hand. (Can't seem to turn down, each time, one more interesting flower -- this is Fortín de las Flores, after all!) Next door to Waldos is our favorite fabric store where we purchased, after much deliberation, the heavy upholstery fabric for the new bedroom bench seat, for which we bought the foam pad in Orizaba last week. Wondering when Carmen might finish this project? The fabric is rather exciting. It has the browns and greens of the other fabrics hanging over windows and storage areas, plus much rather country-ish looking patterning.

Of course, since we walked right past the main El Borrego store we bought a hunk of their delicious swiss cheese. Now loaded down, we walked the six long blocks up hill and down hill, back to our car. It is always a trick deciding which streets to walk on: where are the hills the least steep, where are there fewer steps in the sidewalks and where is the shade? We then drove to Frank & Ania's place and found the housekeeper tidying up and watering the outside plants. She said the uphill water tanks were dry. Dan checked them out, and turned on the water at the meter (Frank had turned it off before they left). The tanks had been full a few days earlier, so perhaps there's a leak, so we'll go back to turn the water off once the tanks are filled. (Dan later sent Frank an email to explain the situation and ask exactly how the water system was configured. Not a good thing for them to think about on their vacation.) Then home again, home again, jiggity jig.

This week a banana cream pie was made and devoured, plus a batch of chocolate chip cookies with oatmeal added. Our 5gal water garafon was delivered just as some came out of the oven, so of course a couple went to the delivery guys.  Across the street, the crew of albañiles are finished with the rubble foundations, and are pouring a reinforced bond beam along the top, a base from which they'll shortly erect concrete block perimeter walls.  We ran short of sand for our homemade potting mix, which needs to drain well to deal with the ample rainfall here, so Dan went across the street to buy two half-cubetas from the guys, from the huge pile they were working from.  This was way easier than driving somewhere to convince a building supply store to fill and sell us one bucket, when they normally sell it by the cubic meter.

Gardi cat finally had his outing and hike across the top of the narrow fenced ledge on the wall dividing our property from that of Valentin. He traversed out to the roof over the car entry into our backyard. He'd been studying this journey for quite some time. He crossed both slanted sides of this roof and onto the tiled skirt-roof above the west-facing bedroom window. Being a dead end, he went back and made the decision not to leap down into Valentin's property. This is the one place where he could actually get off our property, if he was brave enough to attempt the long, steep leap which would be required. We both did lots of calling to him, so he wisely decided he had had enough adventure, and returned to the terraza outside our bedroom. Now, until we get a barrier at this “jump over” place, kitties can not go out the bedroom door, which is really too bad since timid Smij cat feels comfortable there.

We needed to go to the Shattuck's saturday to feed their beautiful petite short haired calico cat. Our weather report told us that it was supposed to be light rain later, so we started our circle trip in the morning. First to the RG store to see if they had gotten our vacuum cleaner yet; nope. Office Depot for more clamshell CD cases. Next was Walmart, where we bought a Beatle's calendar and a tall flower vase, plus a few grocery items. Calendars are hard to find in this area; everyone stocks agendas (daily/weekly appointment books), but wall calenders big enough to make notes on are a rare item.

By now the weather was sprinkling on us. Off to home Depot to purchase the steel stock to create the fencing panel to keep Gardi where e think he belongs. Was raining hard by the time we left there. Still had to go to Shattucks. As we drove past their front gate, we saw a large branch from a palm laying just inside  on the driveway. We park and go in at the upper back gate. By this time the “sprinkles” have turned into a heavy downpour which kept us in our car a while. We found miss kitty under Ania's car, trying to stay dry. She does so love the cat food we take her. We also gave her a serving of her regular food, assuming she might save it for tomorrow? She is so very sweet and loves any attention we can give her. Dan dragged off the branch out front since it made the place look unoccupied, and checked that the water tanks are now full, and so turned of the main water supply at the meter.  ALl the plants on the terraza were well watered when we got home. Our cacti seem to be doing well despite the rain, as they are planted in shallow fast draining planters.

Dan indeed did sell our old hot water heater, for MX$300, about 1/10 the price of a new one, but better than scrap value. Our fresh cut flower man has not stopped this weekend and now we need them. The flower vase on the dining room table has drooping pink carnations from two weeks ago, but the pink anthuriums Ania gave us are still lovely. A wheelbarrow came to our front door loaded with ceramic cookware—turns out they were the very folks we had bought flower pots from streetside near the Super Ahorros grocery store in town. Carmen showed the two folks selling that she had some of their large pots. Their asking price was higher than we were used to paying, so we made a lower offer and the deal happened. We now have four empty large hand-painted ceramic tripod base pots longing to be filled with something beautiful.