This week I thought I'd share with you some of the photos I took while wandering around San Miguel.
Let's take a walk.
Next week, come with me on a day trip to Guanajuato for a concert in an ancient church, a motley assortment of other music and entertainment, and photos of another beautiful city.
Meanwhile...Happy Halloween!
San Miguel offers lots of ways to look around and learn: a trolley tour of the town (which we took), walking tours of the historical center, tours to attractions and nearby cities.
The tour that caught our attention early in the visit was a guided walk through El Charco del Ingenio, San Miguel's botanical garden. A marvelous project begun in 1988, El Charco has reclaimed nearly 250 acres and transformed them into a natural wonderland.
With early support from the Mexican Environment Agency and the National University of Mexico, Cante A.C.--a Mexican non-profit organization--began its work. The garden was inaugurated during the total eclipse of the sun on July 11, 1991.
Our tour was a tour of flowers. Over the last twenty years, the Charco team has encouraged the re-proliferation of the indigenous wildflowers and blooming plants. Our guide this soft warm morning was a knowledgeable and passionate participant in the work being done there.
Our group of fifteen or so was made up of Americans and Mexicans, adults and children. We were fortunate to be joined on the tour, by chance, by the author of a book about the wildflowers of San Miguel (which I bought, along with another, in the excellent gift shop).
I suppose I could go get that book and tell you what all these flowers are. I'll tell you what: instead, I'll tell you the ones I know without peeking. If you'd like to know others, send a comment and I'll gladly look 'em up. Or you can just tell me the ones you already know.
For right now, I think I'll mostly just let the photos tell the story.
Cosmos! A wildflower of the Mexican high plateau...who knew?
As we walked through the garden, our guide collected any seeds that were ready to be sown and handed them out for each walker to toss wherever they would like to see them grow.
Here, around the pond, grow the plants that like having their feet wet, including a pale lavender water hyacinth.
The children were as fascinated as the adults by the variety of nature.
This one is lantana, which I saw growing wild in the hills and villages around the city.
This one fascinates me: it's amaranth. It grows wild but has been cultivated as a grain for over 8,000 years. It made up a huge proportion of the Aztec diet, as a matter of fact.
In one large part of the botanical garden overlooking a beautiful canyon is the solar observatory.
But my favorite structure is one I dubbed the Twigloo.
I am so building one of those.
A flock of young students, on a guided trip through the gardens, had some time on the slide as their reward for their patience.
At the end of the tour, we returned to the reception area with its snack bar and gift shop, neither of which is the slightest bit tacky. They had a small assortment of plants for sale, grown right there at El Charco.
You know, of course, that I could write about this wondrous place for hours. Instead, I'm going to give you a link to my favorite page on their excellent website, which tells of the history and development of the garden and park. I encourage you to explore the other pages.
It's my favorite kind of story, the tale of a vision come to life.
Nature has been so... natural around here lately. Natural and... interesting, you might say.
I woke to a slam bam of a thunderstorm a couple of mornings ago, wind blowing the curtains in my room perpendicular to the windows, rain drumming on the banana trees, lightning brightening the dark of pre-dawn to daylight. It was highly entertaining until the power went out. For seven hours. Even that would've been fine except that it started getting real hot when the sun broke through the cloud cover and my ceiling fans stayed stubbornly still.
Two nights ago, the lightning in the southern sky was so magnificent that I stood holding my camera over my head until my arms ached, taking photo after photo in hopes of catching just one display. When I downloaded the pictures to my computer, I had forty-plus shots of black...and this one.
A paltry and blurry sample of what I actually saw, but better than nothing.
This summer weather makes one's attention to nature more acute. I find myself running for my camera often, fascinated by the variety of life that appears.
The three critters above are busy all night with their cacophony of chirps and quacks and shrills and general yammering.
Also busy all night are the leaf-cutter ants, which have so far stayed outside my wall. As I was pulling into the garage one night recently, I spotted a parade of them crossing the short driveway. I followed their trail and found them at work on one of my hibiscus bushes.
The poor hibiscus was decimated. But I cut it back the next morning, and it will grow again. It needed pruning, anyway.
I had another big surprise last week. I'm sure I've told you of the dozens of geckos that decorate my ceilings every night, scurrying about eating the bugs that are attracted by the light. They're my buddies.
So I was sitting here at my big table at the computer when I heard a sort of splat. I looked over at the floor from whence the sound apparently came and saw a gecko on the floor. Stunned for only a moment at having fallen ten feet, it ran to the wall and hid behind a side table. I looked up. Another gecko was up there watching.
"You're kidding," I said. "Did you really push him off the ceiling?" The gecko up there barked once.
Turns out that's exactly what happened, as I've had two more geckos land within a foot of my head in the past few days. One of them just missed my computer keyboard. I've discovered that this occurrence is accompanied by a vocal fight between two of the little lizards first. They seem to be having some sort of territorial dispute these days, probably mating-related, as so many things are. I do have a lot of baby geckos showing up lately.
Fortunately, geckos are made of some weird rubbery substance, so although they definitely make a splat noise when they hit the ground (or the table), they recover rapidly and hurry back up to where they belong. Unfortunately, I've not actually witnessed the process by which one disconnects another from the ceiling, and I can only imagine the extent of the gecko-rainfall that must occur while I'm sleeping each night and they have the run of the place.
There are daytime lizards, too, little guys who show up in my gardens and on my screens.
Meanwhile, the plants are still growing...and growing...
The jungle is magnificent.
Sunrises and sunsets are glorious.
I'll miss a bit of this, as I'm traveling next week to a town I haven't seen yet, San Miguel de Allende in the state of Guanajuato. Greg will be holding down the fort here and preparing the Blue Pig for re-opening in mid-October. He's had his own experiences with nature lately.
I may not have a post for you next Friday, as I'll be exploring and learning and taking more photos. We'll see how the week develops. But I'll post from San Miguel in the following weeks. I think we have some treats in store.
In the meantime, I know you'll enjoy nature wherever you are.
'Bye for now.
We're in the prime of our summer here in San Pancho. The days are hot and humid, some less so than others, some more so.
Storms arrive day and night, heralded usually by a distant rumble of thunder, but sometimes not. Yesterday early evening one snuck in like a big gray cat and announced itself theatrically with an earsplitting crash of simultaneous thunder and lightning directly overhead. It proceeded to dump an inch of rain in an hour, then slunk off to the west, leaving us cool and refreshed. Lightning lit the sky over the ocean for hours afterward.
Of course, all this lovely rain makes nearly every plant here grow like Jack's beanstalk. Vines take over half the garage in a week. Flowers that normally bloom at eye level now poke up through the palapa roof. Leaves broaden to the size of card tables.
Remember The Little Coconut Who Could, my blog post from December of 2010?
He could and he did. He's now a full fourteen feet tall and is still less than two years old.
To call this a growing season seems something of an understatement.
You notice the title of this post, Down Here on the Plantation? You didn't know I lived on a plantation, did you? Well, neither did I.
My problem is, I really like the looks of banana trees. Their broad long wavy leaves are so pretty.
Also bananas themselves grow quite interestingly for a person used to apple trees and such.
So of course, when I was landscaping this place, I chose a few of several different varieties and placed them here and there. Little did I know I'd end up with a frigging banana plantation.
One of the banana plant's charms is also, as it turns out, one of its challenges, as with so many things in life. You see, bananas fruit in no particular season. They are capable of producing these immense bunches throughout the year, and they do it more often than I can keep up with them. Here are the other two banana plants that are fruiting at the moment:
My friends here have learned to expect banana bread when one of the bunches ripens all at the same time. But really, how much banana bread can one woman bake, especially when the heat index nears one hundred degrees?
I figure when one resides in an accidental banana plantation, the least she should do is learn something about bananas. For example, banana plants aren't trees--they're giant herbs. That's kind of cool. The word banana comes from an Arab word banan which means finger. That's descriptive. Each of the tiers that make up a bunch of bananas is called a hand. That's logical. If you peel a banana from the bottom up, you won't get the string thingies. That's string theory.
Still, fifty-plus pounds of bananas all at once from a single plant seems a bit much. Then again, bananas are a good source of several minerals and vitamins, including B6 which your brain needs to function properly. In fact, a scientific name for the banana is musa sapientum, which means "fruit of the wise man".
That settles it. Guess I'd better quit whining and go have a banana or two. Or twenty.
(P.S. Happy Blue Moon Day today.)
Three and a half years ago, when I was just beginning to get into the groove of Mexico, I took this photo of Travis's post office in Ajijic:
He found me laughing hysterically as he exited with his mail.
"What are you laughing at?" he asked, bemused.
"Your post office!" I replied.
"What about it?" he said.
"Travis," I said. "Look at it. It has a motorcycle parked in the entry and sacks of corn stacked against the wall. This is where you get your mail?"
He told me then that he guessed he'd just become used to it. We agreed on the spot to try not to get used to the quirks and oddities of Mexico, to notice and appreciate them, to stay awake and aware. Of Mexico's beauty, too. And its rawness, its marvels, its many delightful aspects.
I suppose that, in the past few years, I, too, have become more accustomed to this country. Lately, I've been prodding myself to pay attention. This post is a reminder to me, and to you, too. Because no matter where we live, wonders abound if we only keep our eyes open wide.
Early on, I felt like I was living in a world that Dr. Seuss drew. I am still surprised daily.
I mean, really -- who but Dr. Seuss could've invented palm trees to illustrate his wonderful wacky tales?
Not to mention agaves and all the other weird things that grow all around.
Three months ago, Lidia and her husband Waldo (who is taking care of my yard these days) told me that Lidia's father wanted to send me a ciruela, a kind of plum tree, as a gift. How lovely!
The following week Waldo arrived with a very large stick. A hunk of trunk, actually. It had no leaves and no roots whatsoever. Picture a five foot chunk of firewood.
Richard was visiting at the time. We assumed this was something to support the new plum tree until Waldo, mystified, said no, this is the tree.
We watched, mystified in turn, as Waldo proceeded to dig a hole in the ground and stuff the giant branch into the dirt. Then he watered it twice a week.
Can you imagine how we laughed when, to our utter amazement, it sprouted leaves? Then it sprouted plums, growing directly out of the trunk.
Again, I ask -- who but Seuss?
Then there are the animal surprises, of which I shall present a mere smattering.
We'll be covering dogs and insects in a future edition of My Seussian World. They deserve an entire issue.
On with other surprises.
My entirely unsolicited advice for this week?
Stay Surprised!!
Adios from
❤
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