New lettuce, and one cabbage plant, amidst very happy cilantro (growing with a top-dressing of seaweed). All volunteers, dug up from friends’ unworked garden that was very active garden last year.
Category: plants
Birds
As I washed dishes, I noticed something large and unusual in the backyard: a gallineta (ga•zhee•NET•ah). Beautiful bird who wakes us at 6 AM with a chorus of calls that sound like donkeys being answered by owls.
Reminds me that in the campo – a few km inland where we are now the owners of a 5.6 hectare (13.87 acre) farm of sorts – the neighbors call the guinea fowl who come to visit us gallineta. They also have their own word for gate. And who nows how many other things as well.
Small and unexciting
The dogs had fresh bones and did not want to leave the yard. So I walked on my own, pausing longer than usual at the goats’n’geese (and apparently now a duck) enclosure at the local zoo, which the Bradt Urguay Guide (first and only in English) dismisses as ‘small and unexciting.’
Well, yes: I read the headlines. Looming economic, environmental, and political catastrophes on a scale that boggles the mind.
Small and unexciting? I have no problem with that.
Still life with cat and squash
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.
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.