Wednesday, April 4, 2012

León, Nicaragua - April 4, 2012

Today has been a funny kind of day - it must have been because of the big thunder and lightning storm last night. The thunder started about 11:30 and the rain shortly afterwards. Of course, once it started there was no sleeping for us because all we could think about was the fact that our "window" in the dining room doesn't have any glass and we didn't know if the rain would come in and soak the floor.... This time the rain was coming straight down so we only received "spray" from the rain which wasn't too bad. We are working on a plan to cover the window during rain storms. I'm sure there will be more on that later.

This morning was a service morning so we were up by 6:30 and out the door by 8:00.  We were a few minutes early and sat and listed to the birds and watched them fly around in the front courtyard. At our feet was a stream of large ants (not the tiny fire ants). We watched them closely for a few minutes and then realized that they were carrying their eggs to a new home.  This home happens to be under a patio stone in our walkway..... Hummmmm now we have another "ant front" to attack.  We have been diligently using our soapy dish water to keep the "fire ants" under control. Since this seems to have some effect with them we decided to try it with our new colony. So, at suppertime we took out the dishwater and carefully poured it in the area where the ant home is..... we couldn't help but laugh when the last of the water drained into the hole that is sounded just like water going down the drain in the sink.... this might be a larger problem than first thought.



Today was animal sighting day - they all must be revitalized from the rain. We saw our resident cat for the first time in days. He seems to be getting used to us living in the house and will "yowl" at us but today wouldn't give us the time of day.... he seemed to be on a mission. Then when we came home from the grocery store I heard some "scratching" on the fence next door and when I looked I saw two small iguanas climb into the tree. We had been told that there was some in the area but hadn't seen them until today. Then finally, while we were enjoying the evening routine of the many birds next door (it's an empty lot and the birds all seem to like to roost there) we saw another neighbourhood cat - a little ginger guy - who must be the one that our fellow fights with at 2 am....

Did I mention that we are preparing a garden? We dug up an area of dirt and for the last few weeks have been putting vegetable and fruit scraps in to compost.  Pat has watered a couple of times and then last night with the rain - well, things are sprouting.  We have no idea what is growing (we haven't planted anything) but it looks like we have some "seedlings" or maybe they are "weedlings". I guess time will tell but for now we will let them grow and keep watering them and who knows, maybe I won't have to buy any tomato or green pepper plants.  Maybe some of you farmers out there can tell us what we have...



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