Ahoy McCoy

Mi muñequita

How cute is she? When we first got to our Spanish school, they had hidden a little doll for each person with our names on them and we had to look for them. I love mine! She is dressed in an outfit to resemble the traditional outfits of indigenous women here.

So far Spanish class is great! At the school here, we learn one on one with a teacher. For me it´s been very helpful because we can focus just on the areas where I need the most help.

The view from Cerro de la Cruz

Oh! Here´s a picture from my first full day here. We walked up to the Cerro de la Cruz, a hill that overlooks the city. What a great view! I love looking up to see the volcano. The weather here changes very quickly, so in the same day you can see the volcano clearly or completely enshrouded in clouds. I like it in the clouds because it looks mysterious.

camino de cafe

Uh oh, my time is almost up in the internet cafe. They close early! But first a little about the Centro Cultural La Azotea, where we went today. It´s a coffee plantation that also has a coffee museum and a museum of Mayan music.

The coffee tour was really interesting! I don´t have time to share all of it here, but mostly I learned that growing coffee is really hard work, and several steps are still done by hand, like harvesting the coffee beans. So remember the next time you drink a cup of coffee that someone somewhere picked all the beans to make that happen. We also learned about fair trade coffee, which really does make a huge difference in how much the local workers are paid. So once again, if you can afford the few extra dollars for fair trade, do it. I´m going to commit to buying fair trade coffee when I get home.

One more interesting thing is that the coffee here is shade grown, meaning that the coffee plants grow underneath larger shade trees. You can see in the photo the shorter coffee plants and larger trees, some of which are avocado trees.

mayan whistles

And finally, before I go, some whistles from the music museum!

I have some sprouts! Which I haven’t taken pictures of yet. Sorry. I have one tomato sprout, which is awesome because I wasn’t sure if they would sprout outdoors. And I have three little bean sprouts, which are adorable. There may also be some swiss chard sprouts, I couldn’t tell for sure.

Hopefully more tomatoes sprout. And I’m still waiting on the lettuce and other greens. Fingers crossed!

In other news, it’s been pretty damp here and I’ve seen dozens of snails. They are so weird and yet oddly cute at the same time. We didn’t really have snails where I grew up. I remember really distinctly the first time I encountered them, on a family road trip to Southern California. It had rained and there were snails EVERYWHERE so it was basically like a snail massacre wherever we walked or drove. I remember the minivan crunching over snails and feeling really bad for the little guys.

I spotted some on Saturday and decided to add them my collection of backyard wildlife photography. 🙂 Aka small slimy things.

Also I cut some flowers from our yard yesterday and then when I brought them in one of them had a huge snail on the stem. I decided that snails in the house are way less cute and way more gross than snails outside.

hey snail!

Little snail crawling along my front porch.

watch out for that snail!

What it looks like right before a snail eats you.

snail tag

Snail friends. Adorable. Slimy. Slow.

Great news everyone! My blog will once again be about my garden!

After a gray and drizzly week in Washington, I returned home this weekend to gorgeous sunshine. Yay! The sun really does put a smile on my face.

And it made for perfect gardening conditions…a Sunday without any previous plans. Plus I’d pulled out my giant seed collection a few weeks ago to start thinking about what to grow, so I already had a rough game plan in my head.

The house I’m living in now has a lot of space for gardening, in our driveway and also in the backyard. Mostly I planted stuff in containers, but I did also put a few things in a bed along the back wall of the house. Here’s what I planted:

Tomatoes: Three different kinds, from the seeds I gathered myself several seasons ago. It’s a bit of a gamble to see if they will sprout, partly because they are old and partly because I just planted them directly outside. Usually I start them inside on a sunny windowsill. But I don’t think we have any suitable windows here so I’m taking a chance. Cross you fingers!

Greens: A few types of lettuce, some Swiss chard, watercress, and spring onions. These are in the bed along the back wall and I’m not convinced that they will get enough light, so also kind of a gamble.

Tri-color bush beans: In large containers, in the driveway near the railing of our entryway where I plan to string up something for the beans to climb on eventually.

Strawberries: Got a few starts from the nursery on recommendation from my neighbor. Planted in pots in various locations around the yard to test where they do best.

Jalapeño pepper: Also a start from the nursery. Last year’s jalapeño plant suffered an untimely death so hopefully this one does better.

I have plans for a few more things but ran out of time/energy to get everything done in one go. Mostly I want to plant some herbs (dills, parsley, basil, cilantro) and perhaps some carrots. Oh and maybe a lemon cucumber, I have some seeds for those, too. Luckily this house had a lot of pots kicking around so I still have space for the last few things. I just need to get more dirt!

I also took the time yesterday to do a little maintenance on my succulents. I’ve had these about a year now and I really enjoy them! They make babies like crazy. This is the second time I’ve separated shoots from the parent plants. Fun! Will have to get pictures of those soon. Some of them are looking a little worse for the wear after our wet winter, but hopefully they will start to perk up now that it’s drying up a bit.

And finally, the discovery of the day! I moved a pot that had been sitting in the same place for a long, long time and saw something squirm away underneath it. It flicked really quickly and reminded me more of a snake than a worm. So I crouched down for a closer look, poking gently with a stick at the pile of leaves where I saw it disappear. Sure enough, I found it,  a snake-y looking little thing about 4-5 inches long.

Little snake-thing found in my backyard!

I looked at it really closely but couldn’t figure out what it was. I couldn’t see any legs, so it really looked like a snake. But I’ve never known any snakes who like dark damp places, ie under pots. I saw that it had a little buddy hanging out near it, too. They were both pretty moist looking and had heads that kind of reminded me of salamanders or newts, but I just couldn’t tell. I wondered if there are any salamanders that have a legless phase in their life cycle. I took a picture with my phone to try to figure it out later.

So last night I took a closer look at the pictures on my phone. And guess what, when I zoomed in, I saw tiny, tiny little legs! So they weren’t snakes, but probably salamanders! A quick internet search confirmed that they are California Slender Salamanders. Neat! I had no idea that my little urban backyard had any amphibians. I hope that I didn’t ruin their habitat by moving the pot a few feet…

Zoomed way in to show tiny, tiny front leg!

So all in all it was a lovely first day of gardening. Looking forward to many more.

Oh dear, was my last post really in October? Well that’s just unacceptable.

Today I went for a lovely little hike in honor of Super Bowl Sunday, as my buddy and I like to do. We went to Hidden Villa on the Peninsula. It was gorgeous! I hope I can stay in the hostel there someday. We went for a short hike up a hill that had a great view of the Bay. Sadly I didn’t take any photos…my camera is fairly lousy at landscape shots anyway. It was 77 degrees outside and perfectly sunny, which I took as a cue to where my big, ridiculous sun hat. It’s days like today that make the idea of leaving California hard.

There’s not a whole lot of other news. The main thing is that I’m almost finished applying to teaching credential programs, which means I won’t have to spend any time worrying over those anymore. Or at least I can switch my worrying from worrying over completing them to worrying over getting in.

Oh! The other big news is that I just got back from a week-long service trip to New Orleans, which was incredible in every way. I love that place. And I liked the service project we did, helping a homeowner paint his house in the Lower 9th Ward. And I loved the music I heard! Y’all should check out Glen David Andrews. When you are in NOLA you MUST see him live. MUST.

Here, so that the post has at least one photo. A pic of the lovely and odd little palm trees in Jackson Square in New Orleans. I met them the first time I was there, eating Cafe du Monde beignets on a park bench. I was happy to see they are still alive and well.

Friendly Palm Trees

That’s pretty much all I have to say.
🙂