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Here we will submit another couple of pictures that might give a better perspective concerning the nature of our property and our overall approach to rhyming the wild with the tame in terms of animals, growies, and purposes.
The orderly people in the civilised world would be very concerned about the old man who let his grounds turn into a wild, unkempt wilderness. No pride of ownership, no industry, so full of slothfulness, no concern for his neighbours...what a shame.
BUT! Please forgive a brief divergence. There is a "rest of the story"... related to our last submission. To wit:
SPECIAL UP-DATE: In our previous Blogpost we displayed photographs of a predominately red and black bird with a bright red collar. During the entirety of El Gringo Viejo's travels, urban and rural, desert or Tarzan-like mountainous jungles, he had never seen this particular bird.
While, as we have stated many times, I am not a hard-core (or even soft-core) birdwatcher, my parents taught me the names of birds as they would come by our very nice farmstead north of McAllen, Texas in those times...the late 1940s through the mid-1960s. Those species began to mount up into the scores and then hundreds. My brothers and I could name them along with scores and scores of both domesticated and wild-growing flowers, shrubs, and trees.
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| Crimson-collared Grosbeak |
In any regard, being absolutely ignorant and stumped by the appearance of this bird and several of his brothers (and sisters-in-law), we consulted a very famous and highly reliable authority concerning this bird's nomme de plume (literally ?). Dr. Timothy Brush, although still perpetually a young man, is also a long-term student and teacher concerning matters of ornithology. Many of the blind and ignorant turn to him first for guidance about the birds they have seen or heard. The good Doctor is a full professor at the University of Texas - Rio Grande Valley.
He established authoritatively the following:
"Okay, it looks a Crimson-collared Grosbeak, a specialty from northeastern Mexico—Nuevo Leon, Tamaulipas, and a not much farther south. Very rarely one will come over to our side of the border in the winter. Fairly secretive birds so you are fortunate to have them come so close!"
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Returning to the original issue concerning the freeze damaged and unkept maguey plants, and our failure to make them disciplined members of an English garden. We would like such a thing as well or better than even Miss Marple or even Dr. Watson's wife. But we require, at this point, the allowance of time for three families of cactus wrens to finish the hatch, rearing, and introduction to the real world of about 10 - 12 baby wrens who presently have very fine habitat.
The cactus wrens, however, like stubborn soldiers, refused to abandoned their battlements. They piled more chaff, leaves, and small twigs and limbs around the eastside base of the magueys. They especially incorporated their "thatched footballs" with their tunnel entrances into this disorder, making certain that there was quick escape to the fence of our east-side neighbour, Anastacio, about two feet from the nesting compounds.
The broad, long leaves, no matter sub-species, always could be used for fibre. At one time, it is said, over 8 per cent of the Yucatan's land area was taken up in hennequin production. The area around Ciudad Victoria, Tamaulipas (near our little place), was also an important hennequin producing area, with several hundred thousand acres in production and fibre extraction operations. More later...and thanks for investing time in something so hard to explain, but easy to understand, if someone will just explain it. El Gringo Viejo
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