Wednesday, May 25, 2016

Pic-of-the-Week for May 24 (or 25), 2016

Hola Amigos,

It's a cloudy, rainy day today, and we are hearing some thunder rolling.  Kind of refreshing after some rather hot and humid days.  The last two weeks have passed in kind of a blur.... a car show to attend, boat parts to get fixed and/or ordered, finishing my latest quilt top, spending lots of time dealing with Zoey and her injury.  We've also been busy getting things done here that need doing before we leave for the summer, including some major gardening and cleanup. Ben-Hur came over and cleaned up our biggest palm, and it is looking very trim and tidy.  (He hauled everything away and cleaned up all the bits and pieces from our driveway, too!)   Ben-Hur is a young man we've known since we moved here; his Dad has been the local palm tree pruner for years.  The good news is that Ben-Hur has higher aspirations, and has graduated from High School and is going to college in July.  


Ben is still working on pruning our Mesquite tree, and it is a bugger to work on, and clean up after (it is very thorny!)    We had our gardener over to do some weeding and a bit of pruning, and she's dangerous (to palm trees!) with those pruning shears.  All of our palms now have their "summer" hair-dos!  

One of our showiest cacti bloomed this spring, and I managed to get a shot of it in the early morning light.  I've never seen so many flowers on it at once!



Here is my finished quilt top, which is on the way to Oregon today to get batting, backing and machine quilted.  It should be done when I get to Oregon and ready to put the binding on.  


Zoey:  She is actually improving.  I can go a day or two without doing a laundry now, although we do get the mop out pretty regularly!  She is requesting to go outside to pee, and she can stand for long periods of time with very little support, although her legs do get shaky.  She is very mobile with her skootching on our slick tile floors, and walks pretty fast with the sling I made to hold up her back end.  We can see her pushing herself up sometimes with her back legs, and swinging them in coordination with her front ones, at least for a while, but not doing any weight bearing on them.  I'm still doing the electrical stimulation daily, and she doesn't mind it at all (unless I turn it up too far!)  Anyhow, I'm much more optimistic that we can do a 6 day drive with her without too many problems.  (And then travel all summer!)  She has lost a lot of weight!  She was about 22 pounds, and is now around 17.  Here she is getting her "spa" treatment.  Zap!  Zap!  Zap!



Ben attended another La Paz car show.  He had the 29 Pickup all ready to go and loaded on the trailer when he got a call from our friend Hector Manuel, who said "I hope you're bringing the  28 Woody, because I've been promoting it on TV and radio, etc.".  So.... he needed to switch cars.  Not an easy process, because we only have one working 6 volt battery!  He unloaded the pickup from the trailer and parked it out of the way of the Woody, but where we could push it into the garage later, put the battery in the Woody, backed it out of the garage and washed and polished it, and loaded it on the trailer.  Then we pushed the pickup into the garage!  Phew!  And it was a HOT day.  He did well at the show, and again won the prize for the oldest vehicle there.  (I stayed home to take care of my dogs).  You can see why Ben likes going to these shows.....


We have a couple of bird nests that we're watching in our banana grove.  The Ground Dove babies hatched a while ago, and they're pretty cute.  Nice and snug in their banana bunch!  (There is another one behind the one you see).  

The other is an Oriole nest in a banana leaf, right outside our bathroom window. The Mama is sitting on the nest in this picture (tail towards me), and I hope they hatch before we leave about June 10.  (Taken through our screen with my phone camera!)  


Ben was successful in getting some of the bad boat parts repaired/remade in Cabo San Lucas, and it was MUCH cheaper to do it here, and the parts are now stainless steel!   Ryan will bring the rest of the needed parts back with him from Portland when he returns next week. 

You won't get a picture of our dump run yesterday (I didn't take a camera).  The cows who were roaming the dump were very grateful for our mostly fresh palm leave and tree trimmings.  We're going to wait a while before we make another trip (yes, we have more stuff), since the dump is very, very full, and they need to get a bulldozer in there to work it in.  Ugly.

Our time here this spring is winding down.  We expect to leave around June 10, and we will be spending some of our early time in Oregon with our daughter Rebecca and her family.  Can't wait to give those grandkids some hugs!  


Hasta la proxima vez,
Tus amigos en Baja,
Harriet, Ben, Sam & Zoey  

Tuesday, May 10, 2016

Pic-of-the-Week for May 10, 2016

Hola Amigos!

Another beautiful day in the barrio, AND another family birthday.  Today is Ryan's 38th!  Happy Birthday, Ryan.  Whoa.  How did that happen so fast?  Of course, I'm a year older as well, since my birthday was last week (May the fourth be with you....I've heard that a few times!)  Today is also Mexican Mother's Day, so I get to celebrate that twice!   We were also invited to a Cinco de Mayo party at Rancho Buena Vista by some neighbors, and we enjoyed a lovely evening around the pool with friends, a pig roast and great music.  Our friend Mark and his band Skeleton Key played some rockin' songs.  




Of course we are NOT partying all the time.  I have been spending a huge amount of time with rehab for Zoey.  No, she is still not using her hind legs, but we are trying all the tricks of the trade to strengthen them, including this rack that Ben & I put together for her.  It lets her stand and put some weight on those back legs.  Her tail just keeps wagging!  The best place to use it is outside, where she can piddle freely, instead of inside on my tile floors!  Sure is a good thing they are tile, because it is easy to clean.  We've made weekly visits to the vet in San Jose, and he was actually a bit encouraged yesterday.  We did have a bad spell a couple weeks ago when she was throwing up all day and some other bad symptoms.  We took her back to the vet, and he gave her Vitamin K, Antibiotics, this and that, and prescribed some different dog food (easier to digest), and she is doing much, much better.  Now, if we could just get her to tell us when she needs to go potty, and wait for us to get her outside to do it!  Thank goodness my washing machine is still working well!  I've also sewed together a sling to use to walk her outside.  Her front feet work just fine, thank you very much, and she goes lickety-split, usually trying to go under a truck, or through a bush.  It sure doesn't work for me to follow her too close!!  



We won't be putting the boat in the water this spring... it has some mechanical problems, and Ben is hoping to find the replacement parts down here instead of ordering them out of the US.  Of course nothing is easy about repairing boats, and he has hired a local Mexican, Chuyito (or is that Chuito?) to do it for him.  He hired a fellow with a tractor to pull the boat out of its parking spot near our driveway, then pull the engine to get to the bad parts.  Ben then built a dolly for the engine and he and Ryan (with a smidge of help from me) got it up on the dolly so we can move it around as needed.  



So, this is an ongoing project, waiting for parts to show up!  

Another project I started today is drying bananas.  Our first stalk of the year is ripe, and I probably put about half of the bunch in my dehydrator this morning.  I used every tray in the thing, which is 5 layers.  



I've also started another quilt that I hope to get put together before we leave in June.  I'll then take it to my friend, June, in Brownsville, and she'll quilt it for me, and I'll have a summer project to work on putting on the binding.  It's not quite half done, as I'll do 12 squares (or 12 pinwheels).  



The last "current" project we're hiring done!  Mario is here today putting tile around our laundry tub and washing machine.  It was on Ben's list of things to do, but I think it's pretty cool that he's willing to hire someone to do it instead!  A lot less frustration on his part!  (Pictures later!)  We even scrubbed our laundry tub when we took it out this morning so Mario could put in the tile, and it cleaned up quite nicely.  

We have a month left here this spring until we migrate north for the summer.  We'll be leaving early enough to spend some time in late June with our daughter Rebecca and her family at the Oregon Coast.  Sure hope we get some decent weather for that!  (Or that the house they're renting is real big for active kids!)  We're hoping to get our projects completed and get Zoey a bit more ambulatory (other than her skootching, which she can do remarkably quickly!) before we head out.  

I've started a 2016 May Picasa album.  

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