Curiously, none of the other five dogs even acknowledged the lizard’s existence. The human is Ralf, Syd’s brother in law from Germany.
The usual garden story
A few days ago, I transplanted three squash seedlings. They’re doing fine, but …
… I now see six. Hmmm. And when I check on the first of the tomatoes I transplanted,
I see six more. On the second transplanted tomato,
SEVEN squash plants! I had given each transplant a healthy amount of the compost I had taken out of our bin just prior, which a few days later
looks like this. Maybe I can get some of these starts to grow at our chacra, where we have plenty of room for sprawling squash vines.
So this is how my garden grows!
The tomato seedlings are in a bed with a fair amount of cilantro, which I also didn’t plant this year.
And yes, I do need to do some weeding.
Greetings from ANTEL
In January, it will be ten years since I last lived in the United States, and one wonderful and immediate change was no more junk mail! Now all our utility bills are delivered electronically, which is great. There’s almost never anything in the outside mailbox.
But, yet to find and explanation: why they emailed yesterday’s bill ten times.
Well, some credit due — at least you don’t have to type “www” to get to their web page on this just-recently-introduced Internet thing.
The pool on the beach
Though I’ve always considered myself a mountain person, I do enjoy the constant changes of the beach. Today the small waves were washing up and over, forming and immense pool that ran the length of the beach.
Though the camera I bought four years ago can take a panoramic shot, I had no idea how to do that, so sloppily put two images together manually instead.
This is looking back from the direction I came. We crossed this about as far as you can see, where it was ankle deep. As I watched the dog struggling more and more to get his stick, I knew that was changing. Crossing back, the water came up to my thighs! Fortunately warm 😉
The real election question
Yes, I’m an American. No, I didn’t vote in 2016. Or 2012. Or 2008. I honestly don’t remember about 2004, the year both major candidates were related, and belonged the small and secretive Skull and Bones cult at Yale. That might be when I decided to call it quits. Also, there was the “convenient” discrediting of paper ballets in the 2000 election, which allowed easily-rigged electronic voting machines to take over.
After 9-11 (which my wife called as an inside job before the second WTC building [of several, not just two] disappeared, causing our part-time-police cleaning lady to walk out of our house, never to return), I began looking to alternative sources of information. Some sites were misleading, some bogus, some with unstated agendas, but a picture began to emerge: the official story was obviously a lie,1 and the mainstream media, 90% of which is owned by six corporations,2 was spouting that lie. Over and over.
So as the world reeled in shock yesterday at the US election results, I was shocked, too, to realize how many people still consider mainstream media a reliable source of information.
They reeled in shock because ‘everyone knew’ that the candidate whose supporters filled stadiums, sometimes several in one day, didn’t have a chance against the candidate that couldn’t fill a high school gym. And how, pray tell, did ‘everyone know’ that? Glad you asked:
(24 October 2016)
So the real election question: will you continue to regard these people as ‘experts who somehow got it wrong’ and accept their crocodile tear ‘apologies’ as genuine, or will you begin to see them for what they are, people paid to lie to you?
This is not a political question. It is more important than that.
1 the truth remains elusive, but an evidence (not hypothesis) based investigation yields fascinating results
2 based on comments from people from and in various countries, this lack of media diversity is not just in the US
Beach sunset
Blueberries! and more
In addition to fresh (harvested before your eyes) affordable organic produce, Saturdays in November include a chance to pick blueberries.
In a half hour or so, I had three kilos (6.6 pounds). Cost? Just under US$2 per pound.
Checking in our nearby chacra, I met a neighbor I don’t know cutting our field using the tractor of our immediate neighbor, who I gave access for his cows. I was expecting to borrow his tractor and do it myself, but seeing the grass, I realize it’s much to his cows’ benefit. What he’s cutting is some kind of nasty brushy weed that the cows ignore. The grass they will like.
Reminded me of the time I couldn’t fix the fence.
The sky last night
Tranquilo.
Sick trees?
On our dog walk today, Syd pointed out how unhealthy many trees looked — should they appear like this in spring? I agreed. The more you look, the more you see. And those strange hazy skies? Syd thinks it’s the result of aerial shpraying, as a certain German we know insists.
After I got home, I took my camera as I walked to the feria (street market). Wow! Lots of unhappy-looking trees, indeed.
Right across the street from us.
Then, in the feria, I ran across Pilar, host of blueberry picking and the feria orgánica (see Atlántida Events in the menu bar above), and asked her.
Yes, she said, the wind has been horrible, regaling me with stories about her torn-up shade arbor, piles of plums on the ground and lost blueberries as well (I’ll see on Saturday morning) because of the recent winds. She says the wind damages branches, allows contaminación and hongos (fungus) and insects to invade the weakened parts of the tree.
Pilar knows her stuff. She advises the Uruguayan government on hemp and marijuana production (former promising, latter disappointing because the chosen distributors — pharmacies — apparently want nothing to with marijuana. Hmm, less profitable than pharmaceuticals? Or something else?).
Anyway, weather’s getting weird, and it may be the result of some “geoengineering.” But for now I’m going with weather, and not aerosols, for the damaged trees. We simply have nothing here like the shpraying I so clearly saw in North Carolina, Spokane, and later developing in Mexico.
Like surfing in chocolate
Here’s Benji, running out of the surf with our favorite stick. But wait, what’s that out in the water?
A surfer, one of six or so.
What they saw in these surf conditions is quite beyond me. The longest ride I saw lasted perhaps fifteen seconds. This is not a hot surf spot (ever). However, these guys (I assume) have probably known each other since elementary school like Jesse’s friends. It was no doubt great fun for them, with lots to bullshit about later over mate or a beer.
And meanwhile, I’m throwing a stick into the surf, over and over. Which is fun. Kind of. Maybe I should try surfing. I probably wouldn’t crack a couple ribs, as I did with a skateboard in my 40s, nor separate my shoulder as I did with snowboarding in my 40s (both after we became parents of a 12 year old orphaned boy in North Carolina). But it would not work without friends.
The sun, which emerged suddenly in late afternoon, allowed another shot of the erosion of the dunes from the recent storm.
I regret the quality of these pics — when I did the “spooky sunset,” I shot 2 stops down, and forgot to reset the exposure. These are re-exposed through my non-Photoshop “Photoshop.”