We were out for long time. A great deal happened and very little happened. During the first few days, I managed to allow myself to be tripped by Prince....my main pure-bred mongrel alfa-beta male dog. I landed forward, made a 5 inch long, 3/8th's of an inch deep slice in my interior left forearm, cracked a rib, bonked my head, broke my right big toe at the tip, and had numerous very minor cuts and bruises. Prince had tripped me from behind, which is kind of a morbid game he plays, especially when he is playing with the occasional visitors from the adjacent Hacienda de la Vega.
These visitors...a male dog (part coyote) I call RinTinTin, and Mara the female Rhodesian Lion Hound....had come in company of the owner and we were checking out things on the lower part of my property. This checking out concerned some suspicious activity on the adjoining property....it turned out to be nothing more than some workers preparing for a mowing project to be started the next day. (Finally. The owner has not raised a finger on the place since the floods of last summer. Grasses and scrub had engulfed the entire place...five to seven feet high.)
In any regard, the dogs meet seldomly and after a bit of preambulation begin to play like puppies. The problem is that, this time, Prince included me in the game of tag.
I had to have a tetanus shot (hate shots) and a bit of help to sleep through nagging pain (joy for a hypochondriac) but it did cloud about 2 days of memory. My recuperation was quite rapid, leaving only a few bruises and aches here and there.
Then there was a flood of bumblebee hummingbirds. They came to the duranta plant that we have along the corridor. The little one-foot high thing that we planted a couple of years ago is now about 16 feet high and full of the cascading assemblies of purple blossoms that are a joy to a gardener. It turns out that they are also excellent for attracting these tiny members of the race of hummingbirds. Even the males of this sub-species are only about 2 1/2 inches in total length and they are frequently thought to be moths, upon first sighting. For about a week we had mid-morning and late afternoon swarms of these rare birds.....thought to hide in the recesses of the Sierra Madre nearby.....and then over the past week-end they seemed to stop arriving.
It was interesting that the other sub-species of hummingbird males did not attempt to drive off the new arrivals as is normal during feeding times. Even without the bumblebee hummingbirds we can normally have as many as 20 feeding off of the shrimp plants and powderpuff at a given moment.
During the past three or four weeks we have had very brisk mornings. Temperatures have been as low as 33F on up to 55F every morning. Usually it would be in the mid to upper 40's. Daytime highs stayed stubbornly below 80F for the duration. That last figure represents quite a departure from normal....and we even had one week where the temperature did not go above 60F. Burned a lot of firewood that week.
Briefly stated.....the overall climate in Tamaulipas continues to improve with the presence of the military. My point of view is jaundiced because I am there. The American press and their various lackeys, etc. is better informed because they are not there....preferring to listen to "information sources"....and are more than willing to take elements of the truth and twist those elements into what finally becomes a lie.
The press....for instance....can take a person who is essentially deranged, who shoots 19 people....killing six.....and declare that Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin drove him to do the deed. This, in spite of the fact that he was mainly influenced by communist dogma, and who, like Barak O'bama, Jeramiah Wright, Roger Ailes, Jesse Jackson, and most all radical leftists, holds a viscous hatred for Jews. Forgotten also by the press is the gunman's love of Satanic influence and ritual (odd for someone who says he is an atheist).
Beware of the American Press....beware of any press...in these times.
