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it’s raining ants

Jonna — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 02:31:07 +0000

The flying ants signal the start of the real rainy season here. They were out in force today. They are huge, about ½ inch long, a reddish brown color. I think they are queens from the leafcutter ants, not something I want more of in the neighborhood. They covered the pool, I took this after we’d run the skimmer for about 10 minutes.

ants in the pool

The fish do a good job of eating the ones that fly into the ponds, there were none there. They crawl into the kitchen under the door, after the dry season the wood doors have shrunk some and there is plenty of room. Mimi and I were stomping ants off and on all day. Also, the slugs – I hate slugs and snails – were crawling onto the concrete to keep from drowning. Those I don’t squash, too icky. The sun usually takes care of them. Frogs, lots of tiny frogs hopping around as well. It’s a rain forest exhibit out in my yard. I kind of preferred not knowing who all lived out there. Mimi went out when it was sunny and sprayed under everything for mosquitoes. We’re hoping to stay on top of them this year. Tomorrow we need to call the contractor next door and see if we can put chlorine in their empty pool.

I have more rain pictures for you. I took this one while I was driving back to Mérida from Akumal. I could only see a few feet in front of the truck. Everyone was going really slow, it was raining so hard that the water did not have time to run off the road and there were several inches covering the surface. I took this with the windshield wipers going as fast as they will go. I’m kind of impressed with my cell camera this time.

and this? This is not Batman, it’s a Yucatecan raincoat. The standard outfit for driving motorbikes in the rain is a modified black plastic bag along with swim shorts and flip flops.

Chilly winds don’t blow

Jonna — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 21:17:17 +0000

rainy garden

Sitting on the terrace, watching rain pour down, lightening flash and listening to Nina Simone. An hour ago I was swimming, laying in the sun and gardening in 90˚+ temps. Now, it is a cool 84˚ with the breeze from the rain bringing the smell of green and damp. It has been cooler lately, I think that fall is coming and with it the path into the western Caribbean is open to hurricanes. They are out there now, no idea yet if they will come this way but we are watching.

Also approaching is norte #1 bringing cooler and drier weather from the north. I find it amazing that #1 is here in August. Last year we got up to 40 or more by the end of the season, I missed #1 last year and perhaps this is why, it was so early I wasn’t paying attention.

I’m not ready for the heat to leave, I really am enjoying it. I don’t think I have to break out the flannels yet but there is a change in the air. So, for those of you who think we don’t have seasons down here because it never freezes and snows, it’s not true. The signs are there and you learn to feel them, more subtle than in the north and without the awful dread I used to feel as summer ended. Not that I ever lived where it snowed, I’m a weather wimp from California. Still, it got cold and dark and depressing in NoCal in the winter. I hated it. I don’t dread winter now, it’s cooler and can get cold at night but the sun shines and it isn’t dark at 4pm. It’s well worth giving up those long summer twilights to have more sun in the winter. I looked up our hours of sun and we go from a low of 11 hours in mid winter to a high of 13 hours in mid summer. I like those numbers, keeps me cheerful all year.

This is an Elkhorn fern that I got from a friend’s moving sale. I replanted it today. I broke off a small part to put under the bamboo, I want to see how it does in the ground. Looks kind of like it would make a good salad doesn’t it? I’m thankful to my friend Joyce on a garden forum for identifying it for me. It can live in soil or on a tree but can’t take a frost, adaptable and cold phobic… like me.

Polypodium polycarpon 'Grandiceps'

cooling rain

Jonna — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 14:50:06 +0000

The rains seem to be much more regular this year than last, almost every evening they arrive with the crash of thunder and flash of lightning. Last night the temps were at an incredible low of 25°C (77°F), it was chilly. I had to turn the hot water heater back on last week, the water was not warm enough from the tinaco. It felt great to take a really hot shower last night and then use our new hair dryer so I didn’t have wet hair. Who could imagine that I would want to blow heated air on my head in the middle of summer.

We haven’t had any flooding because they have been brief downpours or long slow rains, it’s long + downpour that makes everything flood. Of course, with every downpour the intersection by our house fills with water as the wells can’t drain it away as fast as it comes down. Another big “ah ha” moment was when it hit me that there are no sewers in the centro so all those grates on the street lead to are deep dry wells such as we have in our yard. If there is too much debris washed into them, they don’t drain very well. Theresa said they came and cleared out the wells on her street and it helped. We are one street over and I keep hoping they will come here next but no luck so far.

Mimi took some wonderful street shots the other night, lights on the waves and water at the corner. I liked this one best with part of an ambulance turning the corner.

Alkaline rain?

Jonna — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 21:28:50 +0000

Learning to garden in this environment has been a steep curve, I am trying to regain my formerly green thumb. There are some things that have just been perplexing to me. One is that it is very difficult to grow mint. Mint! The stuff that eats your yard up north if you don’t pull out the runners and the stuff that I had growing without dirt in the waterfall of my pond up there. How could mint be hard to grow?

Well, it is. Most people I know have just given up and don’t try anymore. A local woman at a nursery told me that you have to keep it out of the rain if you want it to live. Then, someone else said the same thing. It stuck in my head because it seemed an odd requirement for a water loving plant. I’ve tried it in several different ways, in and out of the sun, in and out of pots. It grows for awhile and then it starts fading and turns brown and dies.

Something similar just happened to my gardenia as well. It looked good, was putting out new leaves, bloomed. Then a week or so ago it started turning brown and it quickly died. Death appeared to come from the ground, the top of the plant was the last to go.

What do these two have in common, that’s one of the things that has run through my mind. I googled ideal conditions for mint and discovered that it prefers a more acid soil. Gardenia’s need a very acidic soil to thrive and I had been using some acidic fertilizer and adding coffee grounds to the gardenia.

It occurred to me that the start of the rainy season might have something to do with this sudden death situation. I collected some rainwater and used my pond test kit to check the PH. Leapin’ Lizards! It was over 9 – extremely alkaline. I doubted the results and tried it with a new catch of rain water in a different clean plastic container – still over 9. How is this possible? I googled and I still don’t really know. What I found is that highly alkaline rain usually occurs near deserts and is due to alkaline dust being blown into the rain. I don’t think we really have that extreme a situation here in the Yucatan. Other than that, it just seems that it isn’t something that occurs often or no one writes about it.

So, now I’m wondering if the casual comment from a savvy Mexicana is a real clue, keep the mint out of the rain. The rain could be adding so much alkalinity to the plant that it just curls up and dies. If so, it’s near hopeless as it would be too difficult to keep any plant that needs full sun out of the rain. I’m not that kind of masochist that I would run a pot of mint in and out of the sun and water it only with RO – although… I might try it just as an experiment. Or, I’m off on a wild tangent.

There are other possible leads to follow.

It could be that one of the dogs used that gardenia way too much as a fire hydrant. I’m less likely to believe that one since we have been getting so much rain and it has to be diluting any pee that ends up out there. The mint is in two places and the dogs aren’t able to pee on it. I am going to start adding tomato to the dog food to acidify their urine, it might help.
It could be that the rock underneath that particular gardenia doesn’t drain fast enough and it drowned from wet roots. I pulled it up and there is a wet rotting mass of root under there. That would happen though if the roots were dying and no longer absorbing water in all this rain.
Is it just this gardenia or are all gardenia’s hard to grow here? Others have told me that they have a hard time with them but I see huge trees in yards that look to me like gardenia. I need to investigate one of those more thoroughly.
It could be one element is missing from the soil and it eventually kills the plant. Magnesium has been suggested. I found the close equivalent to epsom salt and I’ve put that on the sickly mint to see if it greens up and recovers. Some reading online though suggests that too much magnesium could cause high PH.
The dead gardenia and the dying mint could be completely unrelated. It could be heat, humidity, iron deficiency, nematodes or other bugs in the soil, a myriad of other things.

I’m friggin lost. I did not do well in chemistry and that’s an understatement.

dying gardenia

Up on the roof

Jonna — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 02:55:55 +0000

sunset on the roof

I’m hooked on my roof. For one thing it is cooler up there at night, the breeze is wonderful and if I open the door to the roof it cools the bedroom quickly. For another, I’m enjoying the vantage it gives me over the city.

It’s not the upper, upper roof, I’ve not quite gotten the nerve to go up there yet.

To get up there, first you put a small ladder on the lower roof so you can get on top of the housing for the water filter. Then you haul a really high ladder up onto that narrow housing and lean it against the wall. Then you crawl up that to the top roof.

I want to go up there one of these days, it just hasn’t been the right day yet. Maybe when it is cooler, I’m sure not going up there at night!

Tinkerbell *aka the Angel Moroni atop the Mormon Temple

We had a huge storm the other night, invest something or other or perhaps it was the dregs of tropical storm Andres. When it started I put my highly accurate and scientific rain gauge in the yard (it’s also a green plastic bucket for mopping) and after about 2 ½ hours there was almost 4″ of water in it.

OK, I wasn’t really on the roof during that downpour. I was standing on the terrace and cowering in the living room with all the dogs. The thunder was deafening and instantaneous with the lightning. After most of it passed over us though, I ran up to see the sunset and the lightning flashing over the rest of the city. I even spent a long time futility trying to take a picture of the lightning.

Here’s how that goes: see beginnings of flash, eyes tell brain QUICK PUSH BUTTON!!, brain tells finger ‘ummmm, push button’, finger pushes, picture is of total blackness. Second option: stare through viewfinder at blackness, think that it’s been a long time and maybe now is a good time to push the button, push button, miss huge lightning flash because viewfinder is showing you the wonderful picture you just took of total blackness… do not respond to everyone around you that is yelling “did you see that??”

Flooded street corner

I did get some great pictures of an incredible sunset, as well as Tinkerbell* standing in her golden glory against the clouds. Then I looked down at the flooded street in front of the house and took some pics of cars careening through the water. It was a great night on the roof.

In other news, work has started on the inside pond. The offending wall in it that was precisely placed to catch the waterfall and disperse it onto the hall floor – is gone. The confusing array of pvc pipes and valves and unnecessary plumbing that stuck out into the middle of the pond – is gone. Two simple valves have been set into the wall and are invisible, there is a plug designed to be used around water installed, a space for the skimmer is forming and I’m very optimistic.

On Monday work begins on the drains in the guest bathroom and the laundry. They are below the roof drain and you know how water is, it just insists on going down. Our dry well for the front of the house is a flake, too much rock not enough cracks so the water from the roof backs up into those lower drains. A new path is in the works.