Moon, Sun, Clouds, and Lunar Eclipse

We've been busy working on several projects.  Biggest one is repairs to our seawall and replenishing the sand on the beach after Hurricane Julia (no, not Lisa, Julia was the one before).   That will take a month or more of hard work by our crew to finish.  More fun is monitoring sea turtle nesting activity.   So far this year there have been 18 crawls, the most we have ever seen.  Of course that doesn't mean there are 18 actual nests; some crawls seem to be primarily exploratory.  I'll do a separate post on turtles once the season is over.  Another ongoing project is documenting birds and I am having great fun with the Merlin App using Sound ID.  They have recently added more Belize birds to the Sound ID feature.  

Did you know there was a lunar eclipse November 8?  The best viewing time for us was between 3:00 and 5:00am.  The sky was crystal clear at 2:00 and I got my first photo at 3:00 with just a tiny edge of darkness showing up.

This is with my phone.  Mitchell should have been here - his moon photos are superb!

Clouds were just beginning to show up and within 15 minutes, the view of the moon was blocked.  So that was it for me.  I went back to bed and didn't get up again to see if the clouds had blown over.  

Two days later, the moon was in her glory rising over Great Monkey Cay.

The moon is looking right at me!

Reflection on a calm sea.

Followed by the every day miracle of sunrise.

Also reflections on a calm sea.

When a light breeze comes from the west, the trees block the wind from the disturbing the surface of the water closest to shore - it can be almost mirror smooth at times.  A little farther out, and you can tell the sea is slightly ruffled.

This morning's sky view was of these super cool clouds.

Like UFOs.

Then all hell broke loose, so Clove and I made a mad dash for home.  No aliens, just 1/3rd an inch of rain in 15 minutes.  Always something exciting going on.

Lumpy Sunrise

Barnie, as befits the elder of the two dogs, gets walked first in the mornings, and this morning was a beauty.  My motto is that you can never have too many sunrise photos, so I took a few just as the sun seemed to emerge from the sea.  Then I noticed that the sunrise was lumpy.

Something is a little strange on the horizon.

10X zoom (on the phone camera!) revealed a small container ship right in front of the sun.

Easier to see when the sun was slightly higher.

Barnie loves a good sunrise.

It has been a gorgeous day and a productive day, too.  Dennis and I applied fertilizer to the raised vegetable garden beds and Dennis set out more plants.  He has a big selection of tomatoes, squash - winter and summer types, okra, and many more.  Best to get all the outdoor work finished before 10AM when the days start to heat up.  

Waiting For The Sun

We met our new neighbor a couple of days ago - a magnificently massive boa constrictor.  No idea how long it has been hanging around, but it is certainly well-fed, judging by its size.  It has been waiting for the sun (click here for oddly appropriate music) each day this week to show itself in its brush-pile lodging at the edge of our property.

This morning's sunrise promised us a hot day.

Ten minutes before sunrise.  The air still has the night's coolness - if you call 70F cool.

When the sun rises up through the morning haze like this, the day is guaranteed to be a hot one.

Eighteen minutes after sunrise.  We start work early here to avoid the heat.  Tiger is off-loading our plumbing supplies.  Already 75F when I took this shot.

The weather forecast predicts a high of 98F(36C) today (it is 95F at noon as I write this).

You can almost see the heat at 8:00AM.

By 9:00, the boa's wait is over.  I took these photos today and day before yesterday.  It is so huge that I still haven't seen the whole thing all at once.

Not all the way in the sun yet.  Its head is double-backed to the left of center.

Standing next to it and comparing it to my thigh, I estimate that it is about 18-20 inches in circumference at the widest part I could see.

Here you can see its head resting on its body.

 Although I would love to see its full length, we didn't want to disturb it.

Beautiful markings.

It must have shed recently because it was so shiny and fresh looking.

Look at the gorgeous iridescence of its scales.

 Waiting for the sun.

Its head is larger than my fist.

 Waiting for you . . to come along.

Sparkling eye.

An impressive animal.

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.

Alarmingly Delicious

The sunrises earlier this week have been astoundingly beautiful.  These next 5 images are all from the same sunrise.  I didn't adjust the color, just the exposure time over the 15 minute time span during which the shots were taken.  As usual, I was standing at the end of the dock to get these shots.  The sea was wonderfully calm.  Are those rain clouds on the horizon? Cue rain music here.

Pink and blue sky.

The gold and oranges build as the sun gets a smidge higher. And what name can you give to that fleeting color glowing in the heart?

Fickle clouds promise rain. 

The drama lingers.

Geese fleeing winter fly south against a Van Gogh sky.

That was the morning of October 12; we got no rain that day.  Dawn clouds on the 13th are more promising.

Rain clouds?

But they don't deliver rain either, not that day.  A bit of rain on the 14th, and then boy did we get rain - 3.2 inches yesterday and 3.5 inches today.  So far.  There are still heavy dark clouds out there.  Such a storm last night; waves pounding, wind howling, rain pouring.  The dock took a beating and 4 boards at the end broke loose.  The breakwater worked a treat, though.  Whew.  I watched as it persuaded wave after wave to crest and break before reaching shore.  I say persuade because you can't force water to do anything it doesn't want to do.  Water will always win, the only thing one can do is play on the water team and follow the water rules.  Under current conditions, the water is breaking on the breakwater and sand is accumulating on the shore.  We shall see if the rules change as the seasons change and adapt ourselves accordingly.

All that rain cooled things off and we have been at near 100% humidity for 3 days now. Even though Tina can't stand the rain, we are happy to get our vats filled up again.  Still, we are feeling a little green and fuzzy from the humidity, just the time for baking and roasting, so a'baking and a'roasting I have been.  Baking the double batch of shortcakes yesterday dried the cabana out nicely, so I thought I should use the oven more today.  I made an alarmingly delicious dish of roasted butternut squash and onions.  It was so very simple.

• 2 butternut squash peeled and cubed
• 5 small Mexican yellow onions, cut in radial 8ths (I know it is odd, but that is how I like them; you can cut them any way you want.  The Mexican yellow onions are so very sweet, not quite Vidalia onions, but very nice.)
• 2 thumbs of local, fresh ginger, peeled and finely minced - the local ginger, which grows in the Maya Mountains, is a mild, yellow ginger.  If your ginger is hotter, you may want to use less.
• 1/2 a bulb of garlic, smashed and minced - all we can find here is the Chinese garlic, sigh ...
• 1/2 teaspoon coriander
• salt
• black pepper coarsely ground
• ~1/4 c olive oil
• SECRET INGREDIENT FOR ALARM AND DELICIOUSNESS - Marie Sharp's Smoked Habanero Sauce - scant tablespoon or less if you aren't a fan of habanero heat.  Read about Marie and her hot sauce company here.  Her newest sauce, the Smoked Habanero I used here, is not on her website yet.

Throw all that together in a roasting pan, stir it up well, and put it in a 350F oven for 60 minutes, stirring every 20 minutes.  The sweetness of the carmelized butternut and onions is set off perfectly by the smoked habanero flavor.  The ginger and coriander keep things light on the tongue.

Alarmingly Delicious.

Need I say more?