Category: Nature

General observations, generally during dog walks

When the rain comes

When the rain comes, they run and hide their heads. They might as well be dead.

~ Rain, John Lennon

It rained much of the night, and the morning was unpleasantly rainy still. Our son went to catch a bus to his class in Montevideo.

There were no buses.

No strike, no holiday; simply no buses on the road in ugly weather.

My wife called the friend who agreed to translate for her at the hairdresser. Let’s do this another time, the woman said, it’s ugly today. This despite door-to-door transportation.

Perhaps the bus drivers knew no one would go anywhere, so they stayed home too.

My best guess is that people here have learned to avoid the risk of getting wet, and consequently chilled, because homes here aren’t built to be warm. There is evidence that this has a historical basis (1897):

In the winter, their surroundings are equally pretentious, but very uncomfortable, for the houses of Montevideo are as frigid as the white marble in which they are finished. The people believe artificial heat unhealthy, and in this city, which is as large as Washington, and quite as cold, there is not a furnace or a steam-heating plant. During cold snaps, a hostess often receives dressed in furs, with her hands in a muff and her feet on a hot-water bottle, and gentlemen and ladies come to state dinners in over-coats and fur capes. Source

In other news yesterday.

Firewood was delivered yesterday, but the people never showed to clean the chimney.

Mid-morning, our son’s friend arrived at the door quite agitated. The night before another friend drunkenly refused his offer of a couch, instead climbing on his motorcycle to head home. He’s alive, but parked in the hospital for a while with two broken ribs, ruptured spleen, head injuries and perhaps a broken foot. Apparently there was no contact with another vehicle. His is the motorcycle I fixed a few days ago.

By late afternoon, it was clear our dying 18 year old cat Zeus was nearing the end, so we took him to the vet to be put down. As soon as we got back, I buried the body, wrapped in newspaper and still warm, in the front yard near where he used to hang out. I say near because sometimes we’d see him lying in the middle of the street, which didn’t seem a good place to bury him.

45 minutes later our dinner guests arrived.

Dare to grow!

No, I’m not going all inspirational on you.

I should more properly title this, Dare You to Grow, but then you might still assume I refer to you, which I don’t.

Inspired by the audacity of this tree that clearly has no intention of rolling over and dying, I decided that various cuttings from avocado tree and sprawling geranium bush deserved a chance.

I stuck them into the sand/dirt/rubble bordering neighbor’s unkempt lot with a challenge: I dare you to grow!

Check back in a couple months.

Garní in Solís, near Piriápolis

Being the wife’s birthday, we had a ‘splurge’ meal at the Armenian restaurant Garní in Solís, near Piriápolis, where we’ve been going off and on for over a year. It’s about a half hour away.

  • If you don’t know Spanish, the accent indicates the accented syllable, and in Spanish only one syllable is emphasized, no matter how many exist in a word (it can be 7-8 easily)
  • If you don’t know Uruguay, this conversation does not exist: She: it’s my birthday – let’s go out to eat. He: Last time we ate out it was Thai. Do you want to do that, or Tex-Mex, or Chinese, or Italian, or…? It’s more like, what kind of meat do you want with your french fries? So an excellent restaurant with food with different flavors is remarkable.

Though we haven’t been there in a while, Michel, the waiter, knew exactly what we were going to order.

Sitting in their shaded outdoor area a block form the ocean, we started with a meze of tsatsiki, hummus, tabouli and a delicious eggplant concoction, with pita bread and a half-liter of white wine.  We shared a lamb shish kebob and enslada belen, a wonderful mix of eggplant, apples, red pepper, cashews and prunes (I think). And another half-liter of wine.

I got a laugh out of him with my comment (actually no need for Spanish; he speaks English and French as well) comimos como Uruguayos – we ate like Uruguayans! Servings can be HUGE here. He repeated it and got a laugh out of the chef Ani (who also speaks English, and also Armenian and Turkish). We normally don’t eat dessert, but when Michel came out and started talking to us in a low, conspiratorial way, we figured they were going to offer us a free dessert since it was the wife’s birthday, something that had come out earlier in conversation.

No, not that. The entire meal was on the house.

It’s March – autumn returns

autumn_sky

Cool wind this morning. Time to wear shoes and socks again after happy months of flip-flops.

As a kid, I loved autumn crispness, new clothes and return to new adventures in school. Now it seems more a chore: order firewood, figure out how to clean the stove pipe, clean up garden. Stay warm. Wear shoes to the beach.

Autumn in the months that ~should~ be spring — still weird, the third time around.

Frogs, toads, and bees

At times here, you’ll hear a frog chorus sounding like the ‘mew, mew’ of cats. Confuses newcomers used to croaking. Last year we had many, many frogs – but also many, many mosquitoes. This year less. On the decline, or just an off-year?

Yesterday, our friends’ afternoon asado of suckling pig turned to evening with fat toads hopping around the parrillada.

This morning, the honey bees are busy on the basil plants I’ve let go to seed.

Good to see the indicator species – and the bees – thriving. From what I understand, that’s not the case elsewhere.

Mejorar: to improve

When I lived in Europe, it seemed fashionable for ‘experienced’ expats to tell newbies how the place had gone to hell in the last (pick a number of) years.

Here, I can list a number of improvements in two and a half years. New airport, improved roads, much faster internet, better selection of white wine in the local supermarket (we must have helped), and an effort to conserve the dunes, with boardwalks erected since the first time we visited.

Alas, our nearest wasn’t particularly well built. Its entire length used to have hand rails on both sides. Still, its convenience provides incentive not to trample the dunes, and the base is solid.

Some will argue the place is going to hell (today the rumor of a revised effort to introduce a worldwide wealth tax on residents – enforceable precisely how, pray tell?) but I don’t see it. Yet, anyway.

We ponder and plan. Worrying helps nothing.

A visit from Aramides ypecaha

Aramides ypecaha aka gallineta, bird Uruguay

Gallinetas (pronounced ‘gazhinettas’) are one of my favorite birds here. I’ve only seen them in our yard a few times, though I hear their raucous calls almost every morning. When, this dreary morning, I saw a pair of them in the front yard, I grabbed my camera – to see that one had jumped onto a fence post (behavior I’ve never seen) as though posing. Only then did I realize I couldn’t shoot through a window screen because of the camera’s auto-focus.

I quietly opened the front door a little bit, expecting the bird to spook. But no, it just stood there. Indeed as if posing.

In Argentina, it’s called Ipacaá; in Brazil, saracuruçu. In English, Giant Wood-Rail.