Dragon Fruit Flowers!

Hello, everyone.  I've been walking 4 or 5 times per week, and after I knock out those steps I'm so relaxed that making a post gets forgotten. But doing a couple of miles early just makes me feel so good.

Today sunrise brought a surprise: thirteen open blossoms on the dragonfruit cactus.

The bees and bumblebees act like they're in shock at the huge amount of nectar and pollen on the buffet.

A bee doing her best to cope.

We have discovered that the birds like to peck out the middle of the fruit before it's fully ripe. Now we need to find a lot of nylon fruit covers quickly. 

Flowers for the Hot Season

Hello,  everyone.  It is indeed the hot season for the garden. 

A year or two ago, we got some tiny Desert Rose plants at the home show. They had tags promising different colors but were obviously young seedlings. This year two of them are blooming.

This one had made a single bloom a month or so ago; now there is a whole collection of the ivory yellow double blossoms. 

This one has single blossoms  that start out dark and get a little lighter as they open.

The desert rose plants are happy in morning sun here. Unfortunately there is an ant colony nearby that is trying to raise aphids on the leaves. Fortunately the green lacewings have laid eggs nearby and I hope the lacewing larvae will chomp the aphids for me. Lacewings are fierce predators on aphids and white flies. 

We were studying the plants in Córdoba

Hello,  everyone.  We were taking a good look at the various plants around Córdoba,  because the climate there is like south Texas. We were looking for landscape ideas. To our surprise, many of the plants we saw were familiar from home. Citrus? Check. Lantana shrubs? Check. Palm trees? Check. Jacaranda trees? Check. 

There were some trees we didn't recognize along the streets.

This is sideways even though I cropped it. The tree has little white flowers that are shaped like tiny soup bowls.

You want to look up before you park overnight on some streets.

There were pink water lilies at the Botanical Garden. These are so sturdy in their structure that I thought they looked like plastic.

This is the close cousin of artichoke. They are raised for their stems.

This is the flower. There are a lot of little flower flies in there along with the bumblebee. 

If you look closely you can see a huge wasp or bee. There were lots of them around some white flowers. It was almost a feeding frenzy at that flower bed.

Córdoba is very historic

Hello, everyone. Our visit to Córdoba fell in the hot season, and this year we were able to readjust to Texas temperatures during our few days here.

We visited the Cathedral, the Alcazar which had been a royal palace, the Botanical Garden, the Archeological Museum, and various parks and eating places. We also were able to attend Mass at San Juan y los todos Santos, a beautiful Baroque church near where we stayed. 

A quick snapshot after Mass was over at San Juan parish church 

View of street trees (jacarandas) from the train station 

This impressive thistle, with its little buggy visitors, is a relative of artichoke, Cardo, which is grown for its stems. That bumblebee was really big!

People in Córdoba are really into potted plants as outdoor wall ornaments. These are geraniums (pelargoniums type) and someone comes around to keep them watered, so they're very nice.

The tower at the Alcazar. It has a good view of the royal gardens and the whole area. We went up there and the stairs are a real workout.

We grow'em big in Texas

Hello, everyone.  

I walked out onto the porch to check on the basil plant that was recently dug up and put into a pot--it had volunteered in the vegetable garden where there isn't room for it--and saw a dragonfly.

This is about 5 inches long, the biggest dragonfly I have ever seen.

We just looked at each other and went on with our respective days.

Madrid Sights: the Botanical Garden

 Hello, everyone.

DH visited somewhere we had never been while we were waiting for our flight home: the Royal Botanical Garden.

Lots of things were blooming. DH took pictures of them for me.

 I love this flower, but I'm pretty sure I can't grow it.

Not sure if this is one of the artichoke breeds (the artichoke is the flower bud, the other one is for the stems) or some other kind of thistle. I love the way DH caught the bee hard at work!

Callas are so graceful and elegant. 

If in Madrid, this is a lovely place to visit. 

Pretty little bug

Hello, everyone. Today we found an odd little moth in the palapa. He looked dead, frankly, but still pretty.

Cutter Ants (edited for formatting and clarity)

Hello, everyone. While we were gone, the weather in South Texas was mostly cool and damp. The plants loved it! And, to my surprise, so did the ants that have made their home down the road.

This is what we saw while walking. (Bearing in mind that I had thought the ant city had died out last summer.)

 The shoe is left in for scale!

This was really sudden. Presumably the ants were hiding during the day, avoiding the heat, and possibly there was another entrance or two on the other side of the fence. 

These are the kind of ants that children's "ant science kits" come with. They cut leaves from trees, shrubs, and even small plants, carry them back into their underground city, and grow fungus on them. Then they eat the fungus. They're farmers, actually! 

(Edited to fix formatting and increase clarity.)

Beautiful nature

 Hello, everyone.  

Today I am posting a photo of a gorgeous spider that lives in DD's garden.

Isn't she colorful! I think she's an orb weaver, which likes to catch and eat various insects that fly into its web. They are said to be great for gobbling up pest flies and little moths. 

Strange beetle in the yard

 Hello, everyone. 

I will post a photo of the strangest insect. It was very interested in the dill flower umbels, but I couldn't see any sign that it was either eating the little flowers or pollinating them.

Does anyone out there recognize it?

Wildflowers this spring

 Hello, everyone.  

This spring,  between the planted flowers,  the flowers that came up and were moved, and the flowers that just appeared,  we're really enjoying the view in the yard.

The first picture is a cactus pot we have had for years. Now that it's blooming,  every time I stop to look at it,  the little leaf bee pops up from deliriously rolling around in the pollen. I think she's afraid something will happen to the wonderful heaps of baby-bee food.

This cactus is sensitive to rot, so I have never taken it out of the pot it's been happy in all of these years. 

This next photo is a tiny thing that pops up in the grass every spring. I think the blossom is only about 1/4" across. 

I have no idea what it's name is. It's just simply pretty.

This flower, which is a little bluer than the photo comes out, is amazingly popular with the Monarch types of butterflies. It's a native, but it does need to be watered in my yard. I have it growing in a large pot and it's very happy there.

Yesterday for the first time I saw it being visited by a monarch variety butterfly.  

We're trying to be hospitable to the native pollinators, not only because they're pretty but also when food plants in the yard bloom, we hope the pollinators will find them and pollinate the blooms. Especially on the avocado tree!

Recap of Camino Primitivo: Tenth day, Ferreira to Melide

 Hello, everyone.

We woke up in Ferreira (at Albergue A Nave) and got ready and walked out the door about 0840 to find: blackness. And fog. Turned around, went back inside to wait for light in the albergue lobby. Started out again.

It was still pretty foggy. The crosses are the church graveyard peeking over the wall. As we walk past graveyards, I try and remember to say a prayer for the folks buried there.

As we are in the last 100 km, there is more pilgrim traffic to share the trail with--note two groups in background. And the sun is finally out!

A caterpillar that I, personally wouldn't want to play around with!

In the US, gardeners talk of the Three Sisters, the crops that the Eastern future-US Indians used to grow together. These three are Corn (maize to the Brits!), squash, and beans. Here we see two of the three growing together. And what beautiful squashes they are!

In Melide, we ate, of course, Pulpo. It was wonderful. Melide is also where the Primitivo connects up to the Ruta Francés.

A small break from Camino posts

 Hello, everyone.

A couple of south Texas items:

A really pretty moth we saw on our porch:

Isn't he something?

And we had a cold snap, which meant covering tender plants and moving some inside.

The dragon fruit cactus, inside of a sheet. We also added
incandescent Christmas lights to it.

And to finish off, we saw a very bold squirrel at Bentsen Park a few days ago:

Can you see what he's holding in his right front paw?

Recap of Primitivo, Days 3 and 4 (updated: Days 4 and 5)

 Hello, everyone.

Today, since much of what was to be said about the walk to Campiello has already been said, I thought I would combine that with the following day from Campiello over the Hospitales route to Berducedo.

First off, the walk to Campiello was deliberately a short day. We got there about noon and immediately had a coffee with a egg-and-chorizo bocadillo tapa. Then we got with the people about a bed to sleep in and the washing protocols (bought tokens) and got after the laundry. Then we had a snack of "seafood-rice salad" from their little grocery and finished off the laundry. At suppertime we ate a pizza in their cafe and also got jamon and cheese bocadillos for the next day's picnic lunch. These turned out to be huge.

A bit of scenery after leaving Tineo. (By the way, Tineo had installed street lights on the walking trail out of town. By the time we ran out of lights there was starting to be walking light from the sky.)

I think pictures from the Albergue Casa Ricardo in Campiello have already been included in the en-route post about this stage.

The next morning, we left before actual light, but there was no traffic on the road and we were able to follow it.

The sun came up while we were walking. (Actually that tends to happen with us. Even more so when we walked this time, into the shortening days.) 

We passed through Borres and didn't locate the little bar. Well, we passed it, but after considerable discussion didn't try the door to see if it was actually open or not. After Borres we came to the split in the routes. A number of the people who were walking at that time had mentioned that they were going to take the low route, as it has a lot more facilities en route. They were still going to end up in Berducedo, probably as there is precious little in the way of lodging along this stage this year. (I think there may have been an option to sleep in Pola de Allande on the low route, but as we took the other one it didn't matter to us.) The low route has more kilometers and, significantly for us, a lot more climbs and descents according to the information we had. We went the high way because once we got up there is would be mostly ridge walking. Which is fairly even. And it was.

Y'all will note that while there is a real slope here, the trail isn't sloping a whole lot.

That little grove of trees in the background, and the famous ruins, are about the only place one could take shelter from a big wind up there. And with the said wind, the pine branches might fall on one's head. Other than that, it's a whole lot of open area.

This is an interesting bug that we saw along the way that day. It looked a bit like it was laying eggs in the grass. We had never seen this critter before.

Later we passed along the very dooryard of a farm in the hills, large friendly dog there, and through the village of Lagos, lovely water fountain at the church, no bars at all, and arrived 5:30 in the evening at Berducedo, for a 30 kilometer day. We were so tired. We ate the remnants of our bocadillo picnic sandwiches (most of them, we had only nibbled at lunchtime) for dinner along with a bottle of Spanish wine from the little grocery there and went to bed.

Coping with the mosquitoes, maybe

 Hello, everyone.

In a recent post the mosquito problem encountered walking after the the area received rain was mentioned. 

On that walk, we encountered a couple of fellows wearing insect veils--whole head coverings. The mosquitoes were very interested in the faces inside the veils, but couldn't get in to bite them. We continued walking and decided that fighting off clouds of bugs in front on the veil beats race-walking to try and stay ahead of them.

Research online not only told of various things like the ones we saw--the one man said his came from L.L.Bean--but also a number of DIY suggestions. The one I went with was the observation that, for keeping no-see-ums out, one can go into almost any fabric store. The fabric is also called "bridal veiling." AKA tulle!

I have a lot of tulle lying around so pulled out the big chunk of green--I keep it rolled on a paper towel roll--and got to work.

The concept: A full-width piece of the green tulle that looks long enough to go from the top of the head down to below the collarbone, gathered onto something at the top.

Ready for hemming. The white serged seam was only for the first go-around. The second time, I switched to darker threads. Attentive readers will note that the sewing clips are making an appearance here. As well as my old, but beloved, sewing machine table!

Tulle from stash, purple-ish cotton binding from stash.

The last stage of hemming: folding over the binding (like for a quilt) and then zig-zagging the edge down. I used green thread for the top, but since the bottom is the outside edge I used lavender in the bobbin.

On the dress form. It is almost completely see-through, so we can view the wildlife while wearing it.

The plan with these nets is to pin them to the top of our bucket hats so the brim will keep the netting from touching the face. Then we will tuck the hem into the collar of the shirt.

Missing the Camino Paths

Hello, everyone.

Things have been calm around Ye Olde Homestead this past week. No real developments or finished projects to report to y'all.

This morning we "got after it" as we say in South Texas, and left for our walk about 0600. It was dark. If there hadn't been street lights we couldn't have done our two miles. (Cracks in the sidewalks and unlevel panels in the cement will take you down very efficiently.) We were discussing light conditions early in the morning and after musing about best times to leave, as the days are shortening, we remembered leaving Logroño in the dark before dawn.

Arriving in Logroño

(Sorry no pic of the next morning...we depended on street lights that morning too.) 

We are continuing to walk nearly every day and will do as much walking as possible on any road trips that materialize. 

It's not entirely sure that dashing out first-thing almost every day for a couple of miles is really enough distance, but we went to Bentsen Park last week and the mosquitoes chased us hard the entire loop. It was the fastest 3.5 miles we have ever walked! It's been a rainy summer and the places we normally walk for training have all kinds of standing water...these would also be known as "mosquito farms." We don't want to lose a pint of blood while walking, and we really would rather not come down with something lovely like dengue fever! So it's up and down the streets for a while. This too shall pass.

Return to Bentsen Park

 Hello, everyone.

We're returning to walking on a schedule (yay!) and this week we went back to Bentsen Park. It was lovely walking, not crowded, and we saw something I'd not seen down here before.

I think these are two wasp nests on the same tree. They were flat but looking through the phone camera lens it appeared there were cells, one layer deep only, and there were lots of brown bugs on them looking down at us. Paper wasp? 

I was surprised not only to see this type of wasp--definitely not the more usual yellow jackets!--and to see them so close together. Wouldn't the wasps fight to keep apart?

This tree is on the main road between the group picnic area and the volunteer hut at the entrance. We only saw the nests on our return route, because of the way the morning light hit them.

Just for pretty

Hello, everyone.

While doing things in the yard this morning, before the day's heat hit, I found some pretty and some cheerful things to photograph. (Yay for having the phone in my pocket!)

First, the cheerful ones:

The tiny white dots are Green Lacewing eggs. They're a cheerful sight because the larvae, and also the adults of this insect love, love, love to eat aphids. Possibly also mites! 

And the plumeria blossoms are "just for pretty!" I have been giving a spritz of the avocado tonic from Gary's Best Gardening to various other plants on the way by, so to speak. The plumeria has rewarded me by going into blooming mode. (Link goes to Mr. Matsuo's Youtube video on avocado care. Very interesting!) The native pepper plant has also done that--many tiny white blooms followed by incandescently hot oblong peppers. 

A pretty butterfly

Hello, everyone.

On this, the anniversary of our nation's Declaration of Independence, a lighter post:

DH saw a new butterfly flying around the yard. When she perched in the palapa, he caught this photo.

DD tells us that she is a Mexican Blue-wing. She's certainly a pretty little creature!

Happy Fourth of July to all.

The natural world: creeping critters seen

Hello, everyone.

Lately, since there is time to look more carefully, there have been some odd creatures seen. (Not a snake this time!)

Hike and Bike walk

Subdivision walk

The one on the left was scootching along in the gutter in the subdivision. It was about 5 inches long. (Appx. 13 cm. for my metric zone readers.)  It had rained a day or so before, at least an inch and maybe two. Possibly the critter's home was inundated.

The one on the right was at the Hike and Bike trail,crossing the path. It was about an inch and a half long.

Other than saying "lots and lots of legs" I am not sure what they are.

Progress report on the mason bee nest: the mud plug is still in place, the babies are obviously too young to have hatched, eaten their food, pupated, and come out.  We just check in on it and keep from putting our drink glass on top of it!

Re: beading, nothing at the moment. 

Re: sewing, hemming some napkins for the practice of it, thinking of making some purificators afterwards. The mitered corners and quarter inch hems of the one help to prepare the muscles for the other, is my thought. 

Re: quilting, my homework for the Kimberbell Jingle All The Way quilt class is pretty much caught up. The "bonus" small chenille tree is still sitting here and might end up framed in a small oval or rectangular frame to be a Christmas decoration on its own. (This would give an opportunity to add beads to it, always a plus!) 

Stash report: still a lot of it. But the napkins are using up some black linen. Some of the blue linen got turned into the last set of coasters, but there is more in the house I think. A bit of the leftover blue satin got turned into a pouch for an eyeglasses wiping cloth, that could be a gift idea for this winter.