Cold Weather Makes Us Work

Hello, everyone.  We had a lovely day today, weather wise, but it's supposed to get cold here for a few days. By cold, I mean freezing.

Basil plants

Tomatoes

Cannas, mostly

Potted cacti and some amarillis pots

The avocado tree has to make do with what I can reach.

Various pots. Some are Caribbean tree cactus.

When we heard the weather forecast, we remembered that we still have a few incandescent lights strings. (The one between the tree and the potteded cacti is LED, but it connects to an incandescent string. And it's just lying in the grass.) We put the strings out tonight, and we're planning to add old-bedsheet tents to hold in the warmth.  The tree, which has some strings wrapped around it, is too big for a tent.

All of y'all who live in snow-digger country, try not to laugh too hard!

Starting sweet potatoes

Hello, everyone. 

Unlike many areas, in South Texas the autumn is a time to plant vegetables. This year we're going to try growing sweet potatoes. 

We went to the oriental grocery because the internet told me that there are varieties of sweet potatoes grown in the Far East that are different from the ones grown here. We got 2 of their red-colored sweet potatoes.  We also hot a standard orange one from our regular grocery store.

I put them all in a cardboard box with potting soil, kept them moist, and waited.

The one in front is the orange one. It has sprouted several slips, but the little stems aren't showing much root at all. The other two sweet potatoes are just sitting there. We will see what comes to pass. I have heard that it can take a while.

The season is finally turning for us, and we have hope that we're through with the 100-plus days now. (38+ in Celsius degrees.)

Learning new tricks

Hello, everyone. After figuring out how to use the easy parts of the Blogger app the other day, I got brave.

I have figured out how to add words to a picture! 

Here is the first one:



This is a photo of one of the new bushes we added to the yard. It is a native pepper plant in our area. For me, the best thing about it is the numbers of birds, especially mockingbird, that it attracts.

test post from phone with photo

Hello, everyone.  This is a test post using the phone instead of the tablet. 

This is our 40+ years old Golden Barrel cactus. It was in process to be planted in the ground.

It's Christmas type weather for the holiday this year (updated)

 Hello, everyone. Merry Christmas to all!

We're at the edge of the huge cold pool that has rolled down from the Artic.

It's still a lot colder than usual. Today has been low 30's F (near zero C) all day. Last night I think we bottomed out around 30. We have done what we could for our plants.

This is a Desert Rose and a poinsettia, wrapped and with incandescent lights.

A baby avocado tree, also with incandescent lights and a wrap. The stems are still so thin that the lights weigh them down.

I hope they all make it through.

(Updated to correct spelling and formatting.)

It's been busy (edited for formatting)

 Hello, everyone. I had intended to post earlier, but got distracted and forgot. We did make a small family trip, to a wedding on St. Thomas.

From the plane en route

The day before the wedding gatherings commenced, we visited the famous mountain top viewing spot. The water there is so amazingly blue! And everything was so, so green. It rained once or twice in each of the days we were there.

We had gone across to Mexico to find clothes for the wedding before leaving, as the bride had chosen a patio wedding in the afternoon. This little blue dress is cotton, very comfortable, and with a cascade of necklaces worked out great. (The long one is jades, some from my grandmother, and aventurine. The short one, a gift from a relative, is cultured pearls. The middle one, like the long one, is from my stringing, but it's just a pretty color combination I had seen in a magazine.) 

I learned that all of the beaches there are artificial, which explains why the sand is the exact same stuff as we see at South Padre Island. Ours comes from the Mississippi River outflow, I don't know where the landscapers at St. Thomas got theirs. The natural shore there looks a bit more like this:

Pretty! And just chock-full of lovely oxygen for the fish. Not really a place to wade, though. Looks really turbulent.

Also for the first time in my life, I saw sargasso weed. DSIL1 tells me that the sargassum patches are popular with bait fish, and if he sees them while boating on the open water, he will dive in and hunt for the predator fish that come to eat the bait fish hiding in the weeds.  

Bitter melons

Hello, everyone. Today I have a photo of a new plant, at least to me, in the garden.

This is the fruit, leaves and, at the top, flower of bitter melons, also called bitter gourd.I received the seeds from DSIL and she told me to soak them for 5 days before planting. The seeds sprouted vigorously and came up like gangbusters. After fruits began to appear I took a bowl to my DSIL, a mix of green and some bright yellow fruits.

The internet tells me that people in a number of East Asian and South Asian countries use the green (underripe) ones as food. Supposedly the vegetable is good for digestion. There are videos on the internet of people planting it, and people cooking the green ones. Boy was I surprised to learn that DSIL was not interested in the green ones! She tells me that her ancestors treasured the really ripe ones as medicines. Though one of the medicinal uses is supposed to be taking it in small doses as a stomach tonic.

We don't know about these things. I am just glad that I can grow it and don't have to figure out how to cook it.

On another topic, I am up to my ears in about three simultaneous craft projects, and inspiration for more pincushions is dancing in my peripheral vision as well. Soon I hope to have a completed ... something ... to put up here. Even if it's just food or a garden photo like today's post.

The weather improved, so we're returning to morning walks

 Hello, everyone.

It's been busy around Ye Olde Homestead and I didn't realize how long it had been since a post was made.

This was a view of a near-dawn walk a few days ago. I just liked the shapes of the trees against the sky.

Today's walk gave  me this image:

This is a REALLY big thistle plant. As y'all can see, it's sending up a bloom stalk. I'm not sure which variety of thistle it is--much too small to be an artichoke, plus the climate probably isn't right for a volunteer artichoke anyway. It's not milk thistle, those have variegations on the leaves and don't look as mean and prickery. It does completely fill the setback between the sidewalk and the fence, so probably it's close to a meter/yard across.

If you recognize the plant, please feel free to chime in in the comments and share the info!

Recap of Camino Primitivo, Day 3

 Hello everyone. I had located photos for this day of travel at the same time as I located photos for the previous day of travel, so I thought I would get after it and make the post for the walk from Salas to Tineo.

One initial thought: apparently the meal served at the albergue in Salas was vegan. It had no meat, no cheese, and while there was some rice in the vegetable soup, there was no bean element so no complete protein at all. And it was awfully low fat for people who are hiking all day. I completely ran out of energy and hit the wall around 2 hours into our walk. But we made it into Tineo and it wasn't super late in the day after all. Though we did arrive during siesta time so not much was open until later.

This was part of the path towards Tineo.

We also passed black raspberry plants, some of the berries ripe, but didn't take pictures of them. The berry I ate had a sort of dark, musky flavor. (Pick your wild berry above the height of doggy investigations if you try one! Just saying.) I never picked a berry that appeared to be under cultivation, as that would be an utterly tacky thing to do.

We passed an amazing growth of mushrooms along the way. They appeared to be growing on the roots of some dead trees.

This sundial is on the outskirts of Tineo, along the hiking path. There is actually a sort of "parks belt" along there before you enter the town. The whole town is clinging to the side of a mountain/huge hill and they also have at least one terrace below the nearby street that is used for a vegetable garden by someone there. I saw large plants that looked like asparagus, busy storing up energy to turn into lovely spears in the spring. The little bar we were sitting at, through a little tunnel across the square from the Palacio de Meras, and on the left, had terrace seating with a beautiful view of the town. Also very tasty croquetas for a snack.

We stayed in the albergue space of the Palacio de Meras hotel which was quite nice. You go to the main entrance and ask and they check you in. Also ask for your sello! I did and DH forgot, so for that day I have 2 stamps and he has one (the little church dedicated to SS Saturnino and Justino I think their names were.) The albergue space there has little 4-bed (2 bunk-stack) cubicles with a heavy curtain across the door to somewhat contain the sounds of snorers. I remember lockers and electric plugs, too. The hotel offers a pilgrims' meal at I think 8 pm, for an extra fee.

We had a (really big) hamburger in their bar for dinner. Very nicely done and filling, too. We didn't think that we could do justice to a full 3 course pilgrims' meal so skipped that option. 

A new flower in the garden

Hello, everyone.

Before we were living here, the people who did live here planted a lot of flowers...shrubs, bigger shrubs, and a leaning, viney sort of thing.

The leaning, viney sort of thing sprouted back up about a year after the flower beds were cleaned up and the bulbs moved to pots. 

We didn't know what to make of it.  It came up in the middle of the native (chile pequin) pepper we have there, and we didn't want to destroy the pepper to get this other oddity out. Thus it continued to grow.

It has now commenced to flowering.

This striking trumpet shaped blossom is 5 to 6 inches across...times 2.54 is around 15 cm. for my metric-zone readers. 

Digging around on the interwebs gives me the name Allamanda. It is a tropical vine, climbs by leaning, so it needs to be tied to a support, and is said to have a scent. We will probably tie it to the pergola column and grid overhead so it can bloom without being in the way.

It's the same color of yellow as the esperanza bush that is also blooming right now, in the very teeth of the 100⁰F weather. 

You might wonder why we have a chile pequin pepper growing in the flower bed. It attracts the mockingbirds, who sing beautifully and are entertaining when they chase animals and people away from their favorite berry bushes. Also if you pick the ripe tiny peppers before the birds get them, you can dry them or make (scaldingly hot) pepper sauce.

A gift from the birdies

Hello, everyone.

As the title says, we have found a gift from the birdies. It actually sprouted up in a lily pot, which was near the mother tree.

We have concluded that this is a baby guava tree. (It's the only plant around with the same kind of leaves.)

It is available for adoption, eventually I may find myself with a huge potted thing and that's kind of a hassle to deal with.

Speaking of birds, the feeders in the yard have been popular.

Doves may be ground birds a lot of the time, but these ones have figured out the hanging feeders. Sometimes there are as many as four doves on one feeder.

On occasion we have seen house sparrows load up with a mouthful of seeds and head to their nest.

There is no picture available--cell phones are only up to a certain amount of nature photography--but we think there is a mason bee building her little nest in a small knot hole in the cable-reel table. She has gone down inside of it, flown around it, and cleaned out bits of straw and suchlike, right in front of us as we sat at the table. I think I should maybe buy one of those mason bee houses and hang it in a nearby tree so we can have more of them to come around when the avocado tree blooms.

Spring flowerpots update, and a wild creature

Hello, everyone.

The last few posts have shown the progress of the holdover lily plant. This may be the last one for that plant this year, if it doesn't surprise us all by making seeds. (I haven't seen any bees coming around.)

Y'all can see that the main bulb has made many buds this year. It also has "pupped out" several stems in the pot and maybe in a couple-three years they will bloom, too. At the left in this picture is the stem of another Easter lily that was bought this year. It gave about 4 blossoms. In a little while I will find a larger pot--larger than the 1 gallon one inside the "decorator" purple can--and see if we can have two holdover lilies next year.

The yellow is one of the daylily plants that was brought over from the old house. The other three found homes in a flower bed, but there wasn't room enough for all four. It seems to be happy in the pot, anyway.

On another note, in March on one of the days we were sharing an afternoon gin and tonic (to frighten the plague-virii away) we saw a critter crawling around in the radio.

It's not very big, and we have no idea what manner of moth or butterfly it should become down the road. We did follow our standard rule of thumb: don't touch the fuzzy caterpillars. Some of them have stingers!

Today is the feast of St. Joseph the Worker, and by official proclamation in the US has been declared  "Law Day"--no idea if this name will stick around or not--as well as being May Day.

I was once told by my grandmother that on May Day in her youth they would make paper baskets and give flowers to their friends. As she grew up in eastern Montana, at the exact other extreme of the US (speaking north-south here) I suspect that any flowers they could find on May Day was a pretty big thing. Snow is not unheard of on May Day, and even on May 31 they sometimes get snow in those parts.

Here in South Texas, the first of May is well into "pretty darned warm" season. At this time of the year there is generally little rain and from now into fall what there is usually comes from tropical systems. Today the temperature has been well into the 90's F. (north of 32C for my metric zone readers.)

I have made about all of the elastic in the house into masks, and as the plague seems to be on the downhill slope now am looking toward other projects. DH wants some sleepwear, there is a piece of knit that looks just right for an infinity scarf for me, and hopefully the Kimberbell Christmas quilt classes will be able to resume at my local quilt shop. Also I have started working on a new fidget--still kind of misty and vague right now, but there is an oval of blue fur cut out for the base.

Update on the lily blossoms

Hello, everyone.

This is a brief update on the lily pot that was shown in the last post. It has bloomed a lot more!

They smell nice, too.

The white-bordered leaves below the lily are variegated Cuban oregano. It propagates from stem cuttings but leaf cuttings don't seem to take well.

Catching up on things

Hello, everyone.

We were supposed to be walking on the Via de la Plata in Spain now. Instead, we comfort ourselves with memories of prior Camino walks and Spanish foods. Not tortilla this time! We had tapas for dinner last night: made barra bread on Friday, sliced it thin on Saturday and half of the slices got a piece of manchego cheese and a piece of prosciutto (no serrano ham available at the grocery store these days) on top. The other half of the slices got a new-to-us recipe for topping:

Sliced "Baby Bella" mushrooms cooked in butter with garlic and parsley from the garden. Simply wonderful, and easy too.

In other developments, this is the current pile of completed masks in the house:

It was a bit of a surprise to get 6 of them from that 9 inch wide strip of quilting fabric. It was left over from a big quilt. Then there are 3 of the roses print and a couple of odd ones.

I have enough elastic in the house to finish all the cut out blanks in my workroom. I am using a piece of plain fabric on the inside so the quilting muslin will better contain the germs being breathed-out by the wearer. It's still not hard to breathe and no more "steamy" I think than one-layer ones or paper ones.

In honor of Divine Mercy Sunday today, for the Latins, and Easter Sunday, for the Orthodox, a picture of last year's Easter lily, the one that survived and came up again:

I had thought the buds would open today but it appears there are still a couple-few days to go.

A blessed holy-day and much happiness to all my readers.

More on South Mountain Park

Hello, everyone.

I had promised more information about South Mountain Park in Phoenix, Arizona.

This is one of the boulders with pictographs along the trail.

We enjoyed walking past the boulders and shrubs and cacti.

This little guy was hanging out in the shade. (It was around noon.)

If y'all should go to Phoenix, you should visit this park. (But bring water, and it's probably more fun if you get there before 10:30 in the morning.)

A pretty flower (Camino del Norte)

Hello, everyone.

Sorry it's been so long. We moved house a little while back, and did some renovation to the new place (new to us, that is) and it's been hectic.

There has been more stash busting, pictures of which are not in the main computer yet, and some gardening.

Today, though, I am putting up a picture of a passion flower blossom that we saw in northern Spain during our Camino last summer.

This is called a passion flower because the parts of the flower reminded people of the Passion of Christ. Supposedly the five stamens remind of the Five Wounds and the lots of fringe bits correspond to, um, I think it was the number of days of the season of Lent. I am impressed by the idea that someone actually counted all the bits and discovered allegorical symbolism for them. I would never have thought of all that.

The passion flower blossoms are really pretty. Even the wild unimproved native Texas version is pretty! There is a kind of butterfly whose young--the caterpillars--think it's just the best food going. They are orange and I think they have dark spines or bumps all over their little wormy bodies.

Camino flowers

Hello, everyone.

Life on Ye Olde Homestead has been very busy and it's been hard to find time to make a post. Today, while the next one in the series covers the walk between Comillas and the next place we stayed, i can't remember the name. There were few pictures that day, also, just one of water in the nature preserve and a few flowers. I think this was the night with the huge shelter with bunks that didn't have ladders, and the "blankets" were part and parcel of the mattresses, with a zipper to open to get under them.

True geraniums, which are different from the potted "geraniums" we find at the garden center.

The nature center. The water with its colorations almost reminded me of the swamps in Mordor with the ghosts in the water, from the third volume of Lord of the Rings. (It wasn't scary but the way the water was so still with opaque bands and splotches had that kind of effect.)

Even though much of the day was not memorable, or maybe we were too tired to take a lot of pictures, there were still some things to observe and think upon while walking.

The tenth day: Laredo to Noja

Hello, everyone.

Returning to the Camino series, on the tenth day we walked the length of Laredo to the beach at the very tip of the land and boarded the ferry across to Santoña.

This is the sign at the ferry landing. (Well, it's actually a section of beach and you walk across the sand, but it's the landing.)

The ride was pleasant and uneventful.

The other photo, below, is of a primrose that was growing in the sand along the way. It looks a lot like a similar primrose that grows at South Padre Island, Texas, but it may be a different species. It is still lovely!



After we arrived at Noja, we found a pension to stay at and loaded up our laundry for the walk across the small town to the laundromat. While we were there, the heavens opened and dumped down strong rain. There was also lightning and possibly even a bit of hail. All very exciting! Especially as we dashed back across town with newly dried laundry. We did duck into a bar to wait out the worst of it.

A flower for Sunday

Hello, everyone.

The neighbor has gone into wildflowers in his yard, and some of them have begun to spread the beauty around. The cornflower was in the field behind my fence.

This plane was flying on the date of our last visit to Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge. (Taken by DH with his little pocket Canon.) The plane was barely over the levee we were walking on! We also saw, but weren't able to photograph, a coyote who exited the field the plane was tending, swam the irrigation ditch, and climbed over the levee into the park. All right in front of us.

Returning to those gifts from the birdies

Hello, everyone.

The little birdie gifts have been in pots for a little while now and are doing fairly well...I still don't have a really good idea what kinds they are, other than some rough generalities.