Puttering Around in My Chacala Garden

Woke up at my favorite time, as the sun was coming up over the hills behind Chacala. Maybe 6:45am. The obscured glass in the door to this room gets the first light from the sunrise, shining right thru the glass onto my bed. I love it.It’s such a nice way to wake up. Everything is glowing.

I got up and saw there were five boats out on the Chacala, and I tried to take some photos. But the power lines across the road from this house kind of cut thru everything. It’s still a lovely view to wake up to. I lean against the short cement wall that serves as a railing for the teraza and just stand there, lost in reverie and loving the moment.

Then I got down to business, tidying up. I try to alternate days where I do some housework, laundry, gardening, and general organizing, getting the trash to the trash truck, filling my buckets when the water comes on, and so on, with days where I have specific things I want to do.

I have kind of settled into a routine of doing my online internet stuff that day. I like the rhythm of “work days” with days of no expectations. Sometimes it doesn’t work out that way. I usually garden and write and draw and visit with whatever or whoever comes along. Or do beads or just make things.
My four Desert Roses are all blossoming like crazy. I just love these plants.

This morning after breakfast I pruned the big rose bush here. Just cut back the dead blossoms. That isn’t generally done here. Pruning dead blossoms. So I kind of experimented by doing only one side first. Within three days there were 26 new blossoms on that side, and only dead blossoms on the other.First blossom on my chili pepper plants, planted from seed.

Aurora came over while I was checking the rose, and she was amazed at the difference between deadheading and not-deadheading. So we went of to her place a dead headed a couple of her roses. And her Bird of Paradise. I gave it to her for Mother’s Day last year, and it has grown from a small to plant to about a dozen stems, and lots of blossoms. We deadheaded that plant too. I hope it responds as well as the roses did.

Last month, before I moved to this place, I gave away all but one of my Bird of Paradise plants , and it was a scrawny little thing, too crummy to give away. But it’s starting to look good. I just pruned four blossom with large black seeds, which I am going to plant in the same pot.
Aurora as a bunch, maybe a hundred, baby Aloe plants growing around her trees. I brought some over here, and just planted them. They’ll probably do fine. I just cleared a llittle spot along the stairway up to the house, and I want to plant something there. But I think my landlady would like to pick out which plant she’s like there.
I am getting a ride to La Penita on Thursday. It’s the nearby town with a big street market, tianguis on Thursday. Some really nice gringos from Santa Fe are getting a driver, and they invited me along. I am coming back on my own though, because I want to go to one of the nurseries and see what they’ve got right now.