Pic-of-the-Week for February 26, 2013

Hola Amigos!

It is already the last week in February, and we are hoping that it is also the end of our winter windy season!  We had a seriously windy day yesterday, with wind speeds over 20 knots most of the day.  Of course the wind surfers and kite boarders loved it.  The day was sunny, and I did manage to find a sunny spot out of the wind to enjoy while I read a book.  It was also windy enough on Sunday, Mexican Flag Day, to get that huge flag unfurled up on the flag monument.  That is the only day they fly the flag up there, and they usually have a ceremony with music and speeches.  I wish they'd fly it more often!  It is quite a sight, and we have a nice view from our house.  This photo was taken from our new carport deck.

Ben stopped by Arturo's rancho near Campamento the other day to get some fresh farm cheese, and Arturo hesitated a bit, acting like he didn't have any.  But then, he asked Ben if he'd like to buy some eggs (Ben said yes) and he suddenly had cheese available, too!  They were those cute little green eggs we've seen before.  It is a neat ranch, right on the edge of the Santiago Arroyo;  he raises cattle, horses, pigs, goats, chickens, and lots of dogs!  Here are a few photos from the ranch.
 

A dirty pig is a happy pig!

A handsome rooster

The ranch house

 It is a very busy place.  This is on a main "back road" from Campamento to Santiago, but the highway department quits maintaining the road through ranches, so it often looks like the road has ended, and you'll end up in someone's private yard!  We discovered years ago when we were here on vacation that the road went right on through, and was maintained again on the other side of the ranch!  We've gotten cow manure compost from here, and we discovered about 5 years ago that he made cheese available for sale.  Yum!

More photos of the ranch are available in our February 2013 Picasa Album.

I'm slowly getting my new quilt put together.  I finally have all the squares made, and now just need to put them all together and attach the quilt edges.  Should be easy-peasy!  I laid it all out on our bed the other day before I joined any squares, and this is what it looks like now...

Friends Ellis and Marsha are back in the US for some medical checkups, and Ryan is pet-sitting.  We decided to take their dog Cola for a walk the other day with Sam and Zoey, and she did just fine, but she was mighty tired by the time we got back!  She doesn't get out of her yard much, and she had had a thorn in her foot a week ago, so she was limping just a bit, too, but I think she enjoyed getting out and about.  We walked all the way to Rancho Buena Vista.  Half-way done with the walk, Cola!  You can make it!

  Sam and Zoey are good walkers, but when you've got black fur, it can get real hot on sunny days in Baja!  They're always looking for the shady spots!  (Sam can see some enticing him up there, but we need to turn left!)

  
Our church is sponsoring a Women's Conference this weekend, and I will be very busy the rest of the week getting ready for everything.  I'm responsible for the music, and a bunch of other stuff, but the co-chair is coming back to Baja from Alaska today, so I'm glad to have her back!!  

The other day when I was in Los Barriles, I heard a Mexican Vendor going by (they love their loud speakers!)  I did understand a few words he said, including "naranjas" (oranges).  I thought to myself...he's selling something orange, he said it so often!  Well, it turned out to be fresh juice oranges and navel oranges!  Ben, also in town at another location, heard him, too, and bought some of both.  Yay! Fresh orange juice for breakfast!

 I have a great juicer that we found at a thrift store one summer, so I can make your fresh orange juice in a snap!  Come on down and try a glass!  

Hasta la proxima semana,
Tus amigos de Baja,
Harriet, Ben, Ryan, Sam & Zoey 

Pic-of-the-Week for February 18, 2013

Hola Amigos,

Well, I have to admit that I missed a few of the highlights last week, basically because I couldn't find the photos!  They are a great reminder for me....I guess I "filed" them in the wrong place or something.

One of the items I missed was a look at construction materials and tools that are commonly used here.  Some friends are building a new house in Vista del Mar, just in front of us, and we enjoy watching the progress.  The other day, the workers had a ladder set up against the back wall so that they could put in a roof drain spout.  It's a long, two story distance up, so they also needed to set the ladder on some scaffolding that was set up at the base of the house.  Of course, this ladder was a home-built affair that is scary just to look at, let alone climb up on!  Would you feel safe up there on this ladder?  (I did notice they had a little rope tied around the top rung, which was maybe tied to something on the roof...)

The other thing I forgot from last week is a project that some men in our church undertook for the last several weeks.  There is an old lady (probably my age!!) who lives alone on a ranch up in the mountains above El Coro.  She never married, but took care of two brothers who have since died.  Several other brothers are still around, and they do go up to visit her.  All of her life, she has gone to the spring near her house and dipped up a couple buckets of water and carried back to her house.  The spring happens to be about 100 feet in elevation below her house!  This year, 4 men from our church (aged 65 and up to 80) went up there and installed a solar panel to run a pump to pump the water from the spring up to her house.  For the first time in her life, she could have running water in her kitchen!  That was fine with her, but she also wanted to be able to dip water out with a bucket!  So they accommodated her!  Ben took our friend Dalia up one day last week so she could interpret between the lady and the workers. Here are some photos from there...  

 Here is the barrel / pump down at the spring.

 Two of the men who installed it all, and they dug a ditch down the hill to bury the pipe and wiring so the animals wouldn't break it.

 They put the tank to hold the water in an existing pila (water storage tank) that had never been used, so that the animals wouldn't get into that, either.  However, the lady insisted that her brothers were going to come finish this and put water in it, so they needed to move the tank!  (That's why Ben took Dalia!  To eliminate confusion....kind of!!) 

 She was extremely grateful for the help (as long as she could still dip her buckets!)  There are a few more photos in our February Picasa Album of the ranch house, which is very typical of the ones we've seen.

On the home front here, I have a new desk top!  We decided to replace our final piece of formica with granite that matches the kitchen counters, and it is lovely.  Those guys do fantastic work!  I haven't seen too much of "Techie Gecko" since it's been installed, since they sealed the back edge, he doesn't have as many hidey-holes!  

 Watch your fingers, Carlos!!  They finished up one day at about 7pm!  At least he came when he said he would! 

The other project we are having done is fencing the "final frontier"!  We hired a fellow to build a barb wire fence down the hill to the wash, and over to the other fence.  He is using stout corner posts and 5 strands of barb wire. Most of the posts are in, and if he shows up today (he has a regular job with the water company) we might see some wire strung.  He's having a bit of a problem getting the first hole dug up at the top, as he's encountering our famous clay and rocks.  This is the 3rd day he's dumped water in it to soften it up! 

Now, if we could just get folks to keep the little walk through gate in the corner by Peter's closed! 

Ben cooked another pork roast on our smoker the other day, and it turned out delicious.  No photos of that, but I did take a shot of the pineapple upside down cake that I baked.  I haven't done one of these in years, but I did remember that it was one of Ben's Mom's standard dessert recipes.  I cooked this one in my dutch oven, and it turned out delicious!  And I got to use my Grandmother's cake plate, which doesn't come out of the china hutch very often. 

 
  The weather is improving day by day, and we are getting more sunshine days.  My garden is growing; I'm harvesting beans, one at a time... and I strung my new crop.  We've got zucchini and arugula and spinach.  :-) Before too long, we'll be having our meals on our veranda out front, where we can enjoy evening views like this:

By the way, whale watching is at the prime time right now.  Ben & I are thinking about a trip after March 1.  Do you want to touch whale?  

 
Hasta la proxima semana,
Tus amigos de Baja,
Harriet, Ben, Ryan, Sam & Zoey

 

Pic-of-the-Week for February 12, 2013

Hola Amigos,

Another week has sped by, and I'm not sure we have much to show for it!  I downloaded  our little camera, and it had a few photos from yesterday, and my big camera had nothing!  Nada!  Zilch!  I use our photos to remember what we've been doing, and evidently....not much this week.  

Oh wait!  I remember now.  I pruned our Nopal cactus that resides at the end of our drain line.  Over the several years it has grown there, it really took off.  I got out my machete and leather gloves and started hacking.  I cut off 3 1/2 wheelbarrow loads full of Nopal paddles!  And got plenty of stickers in my fingers in spite of the leather gloves.  The weather was so nice that day, and I was in a gardening mood, so I also pruned 5 or 6 of our little palm trees.  We have a nice big stack of trimmings that need to go to the dump now.  Below is a photo I took of it last April.  Each one of those buds bloomed or grew into 2 or 3 or 4 more big paddles!  It was huge!!!

  
Ben has started working on new projects in his woodshop.  Since we had a drip in the cabinet under our sink, he rebuilt the slide out tray that fits under there.  Then, just as he was finishing it up, he turned and noticed the exact same tray from the other side of the cabinet that we'd taken out and stored because the water filter system jug was on that side.  He didn't need to make a new tray at all!  Oh well, at least he got some good practice.  Now he is starting on a couple of new cabinets for our garage bathroom where we will store our Costco purchases of toilet paper and paper towels (if you shop there, you know how big and cumbersome those packages are!)  That bathroom was the only place in our house where our contractor erred on the size, and built it about 1 1/2 feet bigger than on the plans.  So, we have room for the cabinets (Ryan insists since they won't have doors that they are technically shelves, not cabinets!)  Whatever...we'll have more organized storage space soon.

Yesterday Ben decided to go to the lumber store in San Jose to get some melamine board for our new cabinets, and our new friend Sandy, who is also a woodworker and needed some fresh materials, decided to go with him.  When Sandy's wife Debbie and I heard the plan, we thought we should help them out.  We had a great day, stopping at some of our favorite places and showing them.  We visited a segunda (second hand store), City Club, two nurseries (where I took all my photos yesterday!), our favorite carnitas restaurant in San Jose (Sandy said that stop was worth the trip!  They took home an order to go!!).  We also stopped at a seed and feed store, which had dried chilis and spices and all kinds of other dried things that we have no idea what to do with!  We finally made it to the lumber yard as our final stop, because we knew that the melamine would stick out the back.  The guys unloaded everything, (all the plants we'd bought and the other goodies from City Club) and loaded in the wood products, then reloaded the other things.  While we were doing this, we got a call from Ryan asking for one more item, available at City Club.  So we stopped there on the way out of town and got that one small item.  THEN.... we had a further discussion about whether or not to stop at the segunda, because we both had seen items we liked during our first stop in the morning.  We decided "yes", and after a bit of negotiating, they bought a wardrobe, and we bought a skinny table.  So...more stuff was unloaded, new "used" stuff was put in, and things tied down.  We looked a bit like the Beverly Hillbillies truck by the end of the day!

Here are a few more photos from our trip yesterday.  

This flower is from a vine, and they don't have any available to sell!  He did point out a few seed pods that weren't ready yet.  Maybe I'll go back in a month and see if they have some, and I can grow it from seed.  

  
I'm always impressed with the seed crops the palm trees produce at this nursery, and how fast things grow.  Wish I had some of that soil in my garden, instead of the rocks and clay I do have!   Below is another example of palm seeds.  These were shaped like little pears!

The second nursery we visited has more blooming type plants, so this is where we made all our purchases.  I got a couple of hibiscus to replace the ones the cows ate, plus another Adenium and a Mandavilla.

More photos are in our February 2013 album, new ones are at the bottom.   

Maybe I'll take more photos this week....and maybe not!  

Here's some good news....the road grader finally worked our road.  It has been in really  bad shape since the rains in October, so we're happy that is will be nice for a while (until the next rain washes all those dump truck loads of dirt into the ocean!) 

Hasta la proxima semana,
Tus amigos de Baja
Harriet, Ben, Ryan, Sam & Zoey   


 

Pic-of-the-Week for February 5, 2013

Hola Amigos!

Welcome to February already!  It's already been a busy month, event-wise, in our family.  Tim & Rebecca's 5th wedding anniversary was the 2nd, David's 3rd birthday was the 3rd, and my brother Rich's 66th birthday was on the 4th!  (66???  Wow...)  And of course there was the Super Bowl party we went to at the home of our friends Ellis & Marsha.  Good game if you are a Ravens fan!  The 49ers just couldn't quite pull it off.  At least it was a decent score at the end.  

(Sunrise from a few mornings ago.  I trooped out in my slippers and robe to get this one!)  
 
After having workers here most of last week, it has been quiet so far this week.  I'm really enjoying the new counter top, and the plumbed sink!!!  What a great invention for a kitchen.  We also installed the new faucet I bought a year ago that has a pull out sprayer.  I really like that feature.  And hot water at any time during the day!  Wonderful.  Our solar heater installation was a new wrinkle for Skip, the solar guy.  We have in place in the house an on-demand hot water system.  That is, the water line is in a circle from the hot water heater to all the sinks and showers in the house, back to the hot water heater.  We discovered that since our underground lines were not insulated, it used a lot of propane to heat it.  We put our water pump (that circulates the hot water around the loop) on a timer so that it would come on in the morning, turn off about 10am, then come back on about 5pm until 9pm.  Ben asked Skip to just tap into the circulating line with our new solar heater, and once he and Carlos (the plumber) and Ben got it figured out just how to plumb it, it works wonderful!  And we've even been having some nice sunny days since it has been installed.  (This has been one of the cloudiest winters we've had in years!  Go figure!)  We still have the timer on the pump, but now it runs all day, since the sun is our primary heat source.  The only time the propane should come on is when we have very cloudy days, or when hot water is needed after dark.  

In spite of all the activity going on here, we did manage a fun day last week.  Our friends Tony and Janet invited us to go with them to Ranch La Venta for a  wine tasting while Janet's son was visiting.  We thought that sounded like a great idea, so we took a much needed R & R day!  The ranch is located on the road to La Paz up in the hills (they said their elevation was about 2000' there).   They have all kinds of things going on there, including horse back riding, wine making and tasting, bed and breakfast, gardens, an art studio, chickens, sheep, ...  Just a couple of ex-pats who like to keep very busy!  Bob, the ranch owner, is also a building contractor, and is building that adobe house on the road to Punta Pescadero I posted here in the past (Here's the link:  Cob House on the beach).  He built what he calls a "cob" house on his own place as a practice house before taking on that job.  Here's the Wikipedia definition: Cob, cobb or clom (in Wales) is a building material consisting of clay, sand, straw, water, and earth, similar to adobe. Cob is fireproof, resistant to seismic activity, and inexpensive. It can be used to create artistic, sculptural forms and has been revived in recent years by the natural building and sustainability movements.  And here's a photo of the cob house, which they use for one of their B&B cottages.  Nice thick, smooth walls. 

 
And then there was the wine tasting...  We sampled 5 different wines, including Mango Mead, Honey Mead (made from a wild bees nest he discovered in an old oak tree on the ranch), Chardonnay (best Chardonnay we've had in a long time) and a red table wine that was a mix of Cabernet, Shiraz and Zinfandel.  All were very good.  No sweet stuff here, believe it or not.  All dry and smooth and delicious!  We were very impressed.

 
Not only did we have the wine tasting in the remains of the original ranch house, they served nice cheese and bread and veggies and hummus and pickled eggs to go with it!  Ahhhh....we suffer so....

  
Most of the photos in our February Picasa Album are from the ranch, so take a look.  I think you'll be surprised!  

Good news!  Ben is taking the bus into La Paz today because the red truck is supposed to be done and ready to go by noon today (hope, hope, hope!!!)   What has it been?  Three weeks?  Well, it was a big job, and yesterday turned out to be another Mexican holiday, so we're just hoping he doesn't have to sit around too long waiting for them to wrap it up.  Thank goodness our friend Pat loaned us her van, which was really nice to have when Ryan's van was in the shop, too.  (I know, I know.... we have too many cars that run.... on special occasions only!)  

Here's another "wildlife" photo for you.  I was taking the computer we use at church out of the carrying bag yesterday, and I was taking out the power cord, I found this guy resting on top of the cord!  He cooperated nicely and let me take him outside.  He doesn't look like a gecko.  I think its a baby iguana from the looks of his bumps and spots, and maybe little claws on his toes.  

 
 That's a 2 peso coin next to him, which is about the size of a nickel.  Not very big!!  

Oh....I forgot to tell you the bad news last week.  The cows got in and ATE MY BEANS!!!!!  ARGH!!!!!  Three nights in a ROW!!!!  Just when they were about ready to harvest.  They also ate most of our hibiscus, the pea crop, my bananas that were almost ready to harvest, and pruned the tomato plants down severely.  The ate all the leaves off the beans and left the beans on the vines.  I haven't torn them out...I'm experimenting to see if they can survive without the leaves!  I did plant the next planting of beans.  I guess I'll just have to wait and have patience for the next picking!  And yes, Ben and Ryan did repair the fence (at the beach) where they got in.  I know the cows case these fences daily when they can smell stuff just getting ready for us to eat!  Ben was ready to shoot some cows and start eating more beef!!!  

That's it for this week...

Hasta la proxima semana,
Tus amigos de Baja,
Harriet, Ben, Ryan, Sam & Zoey