Pic-of-the-Month for January 2021

Hola Amigos,

Happy New Year!  2021 is roaring in with good news and bad.  Vaccines are available to many now, and medical folks in Mexico are first in line, as it should be.  Here in Baja, a number of people are getting the Covid virus, especially after bigger gatherings of family and friends over the holidays. Hospitals in La Paz are quite full.  Ben and I continue to isolate ourselves, and when we visit friends or have someone over, make sure it is small numbers; no larger than 6.  According to the rules in place, both of us are too old to go into a grocery store (over 65), but the local stores don't hold us to that, thank goodness!  

Fortunately for us, the weather has been sunny but coolish for us (55 - 70) for the last several weeks, and today it is sprinkling rain with a bit more forecast.  Our garden is appreciating it very much! We've had our share of windy days, but it is supposed to be calm for the next week.  The kite-boarders don't like that forecast much, but we love it!  

Since our last "Pic-of-the-Month", we've done a few projects and gone a few places.  

1.  At the end of December and over New Year's weekend, we helped our friends Mel & Katie (at least Ben did!) put a new roof on their 5th wheel trailer out at Los Frailes, with a few other friends of theirs helping.  We stayed overnight 3 nights with them while the work went on.  A lot of it is recorded in an album I created here:  Crabb's New Roof  It included taking off some of the old plywood which was rotten and replacing it with new, and putting on a rubberized mat over the whole roof and gluing it down.  Katie made sure we all had plenty to eat!!  

2.  We are re-landscaping areas of our yard.  Last month I showed you where Ben and I took out some cactus and agave plants.  We have now planted some rose bushes there.  We'll see how they do; it might be too hot for them there in the summer, but they will have regular water.  They don't look like much yet, and don't compare to the robust roses we had in our garden in Salem, but they'll add a touch of color to that corner of the garden.

3.  I tried to nurse a Grosbeak back to health who had run into our window, and was then grabbed by one of my dogs and had puncture wounds.  Unfortunately, she didn't make it after several days, but I felt blessed to be able to hold and pet such a beautiful bird.  You can see from this picture how eager Sam was to get her in his grip again.  Bad dog!  

4.  Ben continues to grow amazing things in the garden.  We had our first corn-on-the-cob last night!  Yum!  Yes, we managed to keep the dogs and other critters out of it to get some mature cobs!  We think perhaps a fox got in there, because something peeled back the husk and chewed on a few cobs.  Our dogs aren't as subtle...they just knock the stalk down and eat everything on the cob!  We have also had Patty Pan squash, Yellow straight neck squash, zucchini, a "kind-of" Spaghetti squash, lots and lots of cucumbers, tomatoes, radishes and green beans (I just pulled out my bush beans and planted pole beans).  

  

5. While we were at Mel & Katies, we met a very nice Mexican-American lady who had befriended them and was camping on the beach at Los Frailes.  Maria is now visiting with us for a while, and we are reaping the benefits of her Mexican cooking heritage and skills!  She is visiting Baja for the first time in her life, and likes it very well.  She has been joining me on my morning walks and it is nice to have someone to chat with as we walk.  She's also got my pace speeded up a bit!!  It's also nice to have a native-Spanish-speaking person around to chat with the locals and find out what's going on here and there!  

5.  Ben is building new book cases to replace the termite riddled ones we had in one of the upstairs bedrooms (he already replaced one in the other upstairs bedroom a couple years ago!)  It's coming along nicely, and he prepped all the wood with Bora-care, which will repel the termites.  In the meantime, I've been going through the books from that room and giving away many of them to a local Book Thrift store.  Less is better, right?  I'm hoping the new book cases aren't completely full.  If they are, more will be going to the thrift shop!!  I'm thinking some empty spaces would be nice.  

6.  We have some very pretty and interesting flowers blooming in our garden right now.  Here's some of them...

This one is from a plant our friends Jerry and Susy gave us years ago.  It is an agave plant that eventually, after many years, blooms like this!  So fun to watch it develop.  From my internet search I think it is this one ... "Agave attenuata (Fox Tail Agave) is a succulent that forms large rosettes of attractive spineless leaves atop a stout stem."

These bright red flowers are geraniums and Colancha. I've managed to get the Colancha to survive several years, and it really puts on a great show!  So bright and pretty. 

This is a bouquet of my Zinnias that I planted in a mass planting.  They are doing pretty well, but I can see I need to improve the soil in at least part of the bed.  I'll try again next year for a bigger mass!

It's kind of skimpy there on the right!

We are expecting more company next week; cousins Tom and Karan will be visiting us for a few days before they head on to spend time in La Paz.  It will be great to visit with them and maybe feed the Oregon farmer some Baja corn!  Our friends Jill and Rudy were supposed to come next week, too, but last I heard they are delaying their trip again due to Covid testing that is required to enter the US.  :-(  I heard in the meantime that Alaska Airlines is going to be setting up a testing station in the SJD airport that will have results in 1 hour and cost $50.  Sounds like a good deal to me.  (She was not flying on Alaska, so not sure if the test would be available to them or not.)  

That's enough trivia for this month!  If you'd like to see more pictures, here's the January 2021 album.  Enjoy!

Hasta la proxima vez!

Stay healthy, everyone

Tus amigos de Baja,

Harriet, Ben, Sam & Zoey