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.

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