We are back up for a bit....some travel to Central Texas to see the grandchildren and the children.....and a little talk late this afternoon at the Mission Museum about the colonial city of Guerrero.
Our business activity is good, a booking of some timid folks backed out choosing to believe the press and politicians while others have come and gone and others are booking for April and though the Summer. This is all I am going to post about any of this matter save for the fact that my drive up from the Quinta and across the border was dull and boring and uneventful.
My biggest probem, in reality, is chiggers. I had to go out with the neighbour to a corner of his property which is adjacent to the Rio Corona. There is quite a bit of heavy grass of various sorts, so I had the feeling that my task was going to include providing lunch to the chiggers. In spite of spraying down after the fact the damage was done and my lower extemities, especially, were pretty much huge splotches of red, tied together by pieces of icky pale skin.
Spring has certainly sprung.....everything is coming out and the sight is refreshing. We might be seeing the northward migration of the Monarch Butterflies in a couple of weeks. Various of the plants that we have placed around the gardens of the Quinta which attract the Monarch are right at the point of blossoming and this will provide us with a couple of months of presence of this noble creature.
In this vein, one of the best things for attracting the Monarch that people can plant is the low growing, weedy plant commonly called "blue mist" . We have a small patch close to the house. This patch is about 14 square feet, and flowers for about 9 months of the year. During the two migrations of the Monarch there are up to 1,000 such butterflies crammed into that space during two episodes each day, early morning and late afternoon.
This is not to overlook the non-Monarch butterfly activity which in a way might be even more interesting. We have several score....perhaps a hundred different types of these insects which certainly provide for a pleasant backdrop to our setting.
During the next few days we shall be making other entries about going's on down at the place....along with other observations. There is a lot of bird news.....like the inundation of white and brown pelicans (mainly white) at kilometer 84 of the Cd. Victoria - Matamoros Highway, who have invaded a series of small ranch irrigation lakes in that area...along with some white cranes that have black-tipped wings. There are lots of other birds reminding us that they are still around and providing pleasant scenes of rural Mexico for everyone.
