Four Days

 Another day, another dawn, and so it goes.  Dawn on Saturday, February 12 was intense and stunning.  I took tons of photos and pared them down to 2 for your eyes.

So intense it was almost scary.

Mellowing a bit.

The lovely light shows off our refurbished beach (with the cement blocks are protecting the red mangrove seedlings we transplanted).  A newly designed turtle ramp will go at the bottom left.

Finally, the preserved lemons were ready to use.  I made  chicken tangine using 2 recipes from the New York Times as guides.  I used the cooking method of one recipe and the additional ingredients of the second recipe.  Lots of spices involved - cumin, ground coriander, cinnamon, ginger, garlic, allspice, and fresh cilantro.  Also kalamata olives, green olives, tomatoes, onion, garlic.  And don't forget the preserved lemons!  It was not difficult and tasted fantastic.  Next time I will omit the kalamata olives, they were too dominant,  and I will be sure to have turmeric on hand.   And I won't hold back on the lemon!  The flavor of the lemon made all the other flavors dance together, especially on the second day.

Chicken tangine, ready to serve.

Dawn on Sunday was slightly more sedate.

If you click to enlarge, you might be able to see Venus, just to the right of center in the upper third of the image.

 Finally, one of the parrots that we hear every day cooperated  by sitting on a bare branch in the gumbo limbo tree behind our back veranda.  I thought is was a yellow headed parrot, but Nikki Buxton of Belize Bird Rescue told me it is a red lored parrot.  Still hoping for a photo op of a yellow head.

What a beauty!  Its mate was hiding in the leaves and friends were scattered throughout other nearby trees.  

The weather changed on Monday, with clouds and rain moving slowly in.  Not good conditions for photography.  But at least there was no wind to speak of and the sea has been calm.  It is still gloomy and drizzling today.

Not the conditions the passengers on the cruise were expecting!

Even now at midday, it is quite cool.  I have a lentil casserole in the oven to get the house a bit warmer.  

One blanket may not be enough!

Stay warm and cozy where ever you are.

A Fine Start To The Weekend

Very busy this morning.  First thing was to walk the dogs before 6:30.  Then I worked with 2 of our workers today to put more sun shade up on a veranda that was getting too hot for the solar power batteries that live there.  After that we put up 4 pairs of eye hooks for my new elastic resistance tubes that will let me continue with the physical therapy for my shoulder.  I'll be trying out new exercises tomorrow.  Next, we marked the 3 palm trees that needed to be removed because they were shading some of the raised garden beds.  We have far too many coconut palms here, so it is good to thin them out a bit.  The guys love an excuse to use the chainsaw and made short work of cutting them down and removing the trunks and fronds.  The vegetables will be much happier with their new-found light.  So our first project was to minimize sunlight and the last project was to maximize it!  Go figure.

Here's how the day started:

5:57AM - False Dawn. 

The deep orange of false dawn faded completely to grey before the sun actually rose above the horizon.

True Dawn - 6:24AM.

The day has lived up to its start with a light breeze just ruffling the surface of the sea as the day has warmed up.  The iguanas have been busy digging in the warm sand.  The sun rules all life down here.

I'll wrap up with 2 sleepy pups in their new beds.

Clove, with her deer-like legs tucked up.

Barnie, with her amusingly short legs and long body.

The beds are the same size, so you can see how much bigger Barnie is than Clove.  I estimate that Barnie weighs close to 100lbs and Clove is probably about 75lbs.  

Wishing that sun finds and warms you on this weekend, where ever you are.

A Busy Dawn

Dipping a toe back into blogging - let's see if I can remember how to do this and if anyone will show up to read it!

Two days ago, there was a dramatic dawn sky on view while walking one of the dogs.  This is what we saw.

Cruise ship on the horizon at center, a small container ship at the far left  and much farther away from shore (it is just a small dot that you have to zoom in on to see), and a second container ship to the right.  Little Monkey Cay is the tiny isle at the far right.  All against a dawn sky reflected in the sea.

But wait - there's more!

A water spout to the south of the cruise ship. 

Twenty-five minutes later the water spout retreated back up into the clouds and was no more.

Also on the walk I stopped to take a photo of a young pineapple bolete mushroom (Boletellus ananas).  Barnie was keeping an eye on the parrots making a racket in the trees.

Barnie, being all photogenic.

The start of another day in South Englishtown.

Looks like I'll start blogging again.  I see I need to update lots of things, but I shall post this as it is now and work on the updates and prettyfying as I go along.  Cheers!

Dawn and a Fat Boa

We had a very much appreciated night of rainfall last night that cooled things off, relatively speaking.  As I was getting for my morning run (technically morning "jog"), I saw this wonderful color developing as the sun rose over the sea.

Despite the bright beginning of the day, clouds soon set in, which kept the temperature reasonable in the morning.  By midday, the sun was back in full force.  This afternoon, our batteries are charged and water vats are full.

The little boa constrictor continues to hang out in the tamarind tree outside our back door.  I don't see it every day, but I am pretty sure that this tree is its home, for the time being at least.  A few days ago I noticed that it had a suspicious bulge.  A hummingbird-sized bulge.

Boa with a bulge.

Happy snake.  Sad bird.  Well, I suppose the bird isn't sad any longer.

Dawn in Three Parts

I was just reading Midmarsh John's latest post Friday morning with his photo of a gorgeous dawn sky holding a crescent moon and I realized that some 7 or so hours after he had taken his picture, I had taken some of the same crescent moon at dawn over here on the other side of the Atlantic.  The sky in John's photo has flaming orange clouds with a slim crescent above.  Be sure to check it out.  The image below is more sedate with rosy fingers reaching for the moon over a dove grey sea and clouds. The rays that converge on the sun like this are called "crepuscular rays".

Part 1.  Slim crescent moon chased high into the sky by the rising sun.

Ten minutes later, the sun was high enough to illuminate the grey clouds.

Part 2.  Coral lining in grey clouds.

I turned to the west and saw that dawn had reached across the heavens with sunrays converging at the spot opposite the sun.  Rays like this are called "anticrepuscular rays".  Here is nice website that talks about sunrays and how to see them best.

Part 3.  Dawn sunrays in the western sky.

I took the last 2 photos above from the sunset balcony, yes the very balcony that has been the site of the 2 most recent projects.  The photo below shows the sunset balcony with the upsidedown roof underneath it and the sunshade above it.

Come on up!

 I am really pleased with how the sunshade turned out.

Sunshade extending from under the eaves out to the rail of the balcony.

Just look at all that nice shade.

Twenty-eight minutes past high noon.  The shade is quite pleasant.

The hot-glue gun worked like a charm to hem the edges of the shade cloth.

I wrapped the cloth under the frame on the south (here) and north ends, and secured it to the frame using eyehooks and carabiners.  The hardware is stainless steel to minimize corrosion in the salt air.

I like how the shade cloth lets some light through, so that it doesn't make the inside of the cabana too dark.

View to the west.

Below is a detail showing the hemmed end with the butterfly clip, carabiner and the eyehook screw.

The carabiners will make it easy to take the cloth down if a storm comes up.  I can reach all 11 carabiners without a stool or ladder.  I really don't want to be standing on a ladder with the wind whipping around!

It took us not quite 3 days from start to finish for the sunshade project.  Amazing how quickly it can go when you have the materials at hand.

Dawn Rainbows

I know, I know -you're thinking "Not more rainbow and sunrise photos!"  But I think these are really special.  I glimpsed this most magnificent rainbow through the bathroom window while groggily brushing my teeth.  Grabbed the camera and ran up to the sunset balcony to try to get some shots. Then turned around and saw the sun newly risen above the sea and peeking through the rain clouds. The show was over in less than 3 minutes.

Never seen pink rain falling from a rainbow before.

Golden sunrise.

These shots are not enhanced - just cropped a little and darkened a bit to compensate for over-exposure.  I was still half-asleep and didn't even have my glasses on yet; yea for autofocus!

Three Years Ago Today

Three years ago today, Max and I arrived in South Englishtown Belize, a permanent move for us.  We left Rochester, Minnesota and in fact we left Dennis there to tidy up some loose ends.  He joined us in Belize 10 days later on Christmas Eve, 2012.

The beautiful home where Dennis and I lived for 20 years (and have since sold) - beautiful in the spring and summer.

View from our neighbor's perspective.

The flowers at their peak.

Looking from our garden across our neighbors' manicured lawns to the farm fields and wooded hills across the road.  Hard to beat this view. 

Another hard to beat view.

Our shaded patio and back garden.

But too often, the views included snow.

Rosy dawn after overnight snowfall.

Pretty sure I took this shot in late March; there are some disappointed daffodil leaves in that flower bed at the lower right.  Way too much snow and cold for 5 months of the year.

Max in the sunroom on a winter's day, trying to stay warm.  Her strategy was to insulate with fat!  She is much slimmer in her new home.

Fed up with cold weather - just look at Max's face in the photo above - we needed to live where the weather suits our clothes (click to listen to Harry) while you see why we made the move.

Happy Max, looking out over the sea in her new home.

Our first photo (scanned in from a 35mm negative) of the property we ended up purchasing in 2004.  It starts waaaaay down the beach just after the palm that is leaning over the sea in the center of the photo and goes for 430 feet.

Rosy dawn over smooth sea.  Way better than over snowy field.

Look at how the sunlight hopscotches along the undersides of the clouds.

Black Creek in our new backyard.

Our new view to the south.

The vacation cabana before we expanded the veranda and started the addition.

Racing home against the rain.

A fine day for a sail.

Another sunrise - happens every day.

Backyard birds - adult and juvenile little blue herons.

Hey look - the sun came up again!

Local caterpillar.

Local veg for roasting.

Neighborhood birds - brown pelicans.

Kiskadee vs tiger snake.  Kiskadee wins.  This time.

Mellow Max.

Basilisk lizard.

Nutmeg fruiting

Peppercorns.

Tropical color.

A glimpse of what brought us here 3 years ago.  More to come in part 2.