Work and Rewards on a Cold Summer Weekend

We are having unseasonably cool weather for the past 2 days and on into next week. The only good thing about the cool temp is that it is wax in my ears to deafen me to the siren song calling to me from outside. "Why is that good?" you may ask. It is good because I have loads of work to finish by Monday -- damn deadines! Taking the time to write this post is my reward to myself for being able to cross 3 things off my must do list; now only more 4 to go. :-(

So, how to make the most of my reward? I think I will post some of my favorite photos that I have taken around our house or nearby so far this summer. I hope you enjoy viewing them as much as I enjoyed capturing them and writing about them.

This first photo should have been in last week's lily post. Look at how the light shines through the delicate tissue paper of the sun-dried daylily petals.

We planted 5 coneflowers about 5 years ago and they have propagated to form a huge mass that has taken over the flower bed at the front of the house. I love the coneflowers, but they have outgrown their spot. Later this year we will transplant them to areas in which they can go wild in their abandonment. I took the next 2 shots in our front yard just after sunrise. I was drawn to the dewdrops on the spikes at the center of this lovely composite flower. I lose myself in the symmetry of the whorls, sliding in between the whorls with my arms spread wide to touch the dewy spikes on either side.

When Dennis and I were walking along the Zumbro River earlier, a butterfly landed on his sweaty arm and could not be persuaded to leave. I was able to get some good photos of it, including the 3 below.

You can click on any of the images to see them larger. The eyes and furry-looking head are quite impressive in the shot above. That is my finger in the shot below, trying to persuade it to move and open its wings, but nothing doing. (Not a bad shot for holding the camera one-handed, though.) Dennis' sweat must be sweeter than even I had realized! ;-)

This fly was also photographed on our river walk. I was amazed at how beautiful it looks with its pewter sheen. Seriously! Enlarge it for yourself and take a look at the delicate wings, the cool spikey black hairs, and the rich kidney bean eyes. Up close it does not have yuck factor that they normally do when flitting about your dinner.

Below is my best shot so far of a damselfly. It looks so metallic, like mini-robot.

Milkweed was in nearly full bloom. These flowers are so opulent and overblown, almost indecent in their voluptuousness. Yet, in the second photo, you can see how each floret is pristine, almost prissy in its individual perfection.

On the other end of the showey spectrum is this lovely grass flower head. Its beauty lies in its elegant simpicity. If you look closely, you can see several insects and strands of a delicate spider web; an entire world of life and death on a 5 inch stem.

And with this I will end this post. I think I may need another reward before the weekend is over, so visit again soon.

Lily Therapy

What a week this was; too busy at work to even take a deep breath. On top of that, computer issues kept me from posting. So now it is Saturday and I have a chance to take a deep breath or two (in spite of working 4 hours earlier today), my computer is doing just fine, and I got a chance to get outside and take a few more photos. Time to compose a post!

I admit it; I am in love with lilies. I love their texture, their parts, their sensual shapes, the insects they attract, the way raindrops and dewdrops cling to their petals, their rich colors, their delicate colors, their beginnings, their ends. If you don’t like lilies, go ahead and stop now or be brave -- see if you are able to resist these lilies ...

Green and pink buds with a newly opened pink lily. These pink lilies seem to emit a soft, warm glow.


Velvety brown anthers cupped in a yellow petal



A choir of anthers surround the creamy stigma of this blood red lily.



The green grasshopper nymph contrasts sharply with the red of the lily.



This little guy was very sensitive to the autofocus mechanism of my camera. I chased it slowly around the lily while trying to focus on it instead the petal. I finally did get a couple of good shots, though.



It has white bands on its dark antennae.

I will leave you with this photo of the end of the flowers. The petals are gone, but the form remains simply elegant, especially when seen against the backdrop of a stormy sky.

A Slow Stroll Along the Zumbro River

Our walk along the Zumbro River path yesterday was excellent. I have never before seen such a profussion of wildflowers in that area. Lots of good insects and birds, too. We walked perhaps a mile total there and back, taking about 90 minutes because I was taking so many photos; 212 in all. After deleting the failures, I still had 146 photos. So that works out to about 97 photos an hour; pretty rich, I'd say. I was quite taken with this shiny green metallic beetle. If you use your imagination, you can see the reflection of my camera in the carapace of the second one.

The mullien was abundant along many sections of the path. I hadn't realized before how delicate each individual flower in the spike is. The anthers are wonderfully hairy!

I was glad to have my long lens with me to get this shot of a deer on the opposite river bank. At some point after I took the photo, it got spooked by something and we could hear it snorting and stamping and crashing through the undergrowth.

I'll be posting more photos from that walk in the days to come. But don't worry -- I won't make you look at all 146! ;-)

Independence Day

Ben Franklin proposed the wild turkey as the national bird for the USA. In honor of that near miss, here is a photo of a wild tukey hen and turkey chicks (exploring our new retaining wall and soon-to-be patio) on our July 4th holiday. The bald eagle won the honor of national bird, but so far we have not had the pleasure of a visit from one. ;-)

Independence Day Weekend

July 4th falls on Saturday this year, so Friday July 3rd is a holiday for most of the USA. It was a great day for taking photos in the garden. Tomorrow I hope to take more photos along a path that follows the river. But for now I will post some of the highlights from today. I was out just after dawn to get shots of the daylilies. (red)

And the white moth in the dew-coated grass. (white)

This moth is gorgeous. I hope someone can help me identify it. Please excuse the quasi-double exposures; It just wouldn’t hold still long enough for a good photo. (blue)


I honestly didn’t plan the red, white, and blue theme. It really just happened spontaneously and I went back and added the colors after I laid out the photos.

In the Grass

Today was a fine day for insects in the grass. I couldn't resist posting this one right away. I call it "Mothra".

Garden Pics

I shot a few more garden pics today (see below) and added them to the Picasa Album at: http://picasaweb.google.com/lulalaney/MinnesotaGardenInMidJune02#.

A dragonfly was particularly photogenic and cooperative. The patterning of the wing veins and their shadow on the leaf below is striking.


Also in the insect theme is this pretty bug seen with eggs on the Columbine seedhead. It is probably some devasting pest, but quite pretty. In the Picasa album, you can see that this one of a mating pair.

Delightful Friday Evening and Congratulations to Tony

Last night after work I went to a delightful dinner hosted by a friend to celebrate a very prestigious award that he received. Antonino, Tony to his friends, and his charming wife Samantha arranged for the dinner for 15 people to be held at a very posh shop (Sopra Sotto) that sells fancy Italian tableware, stemware, etc. The fun part was that the dinner was really a cooking lesson from an Italian chef, Antonio Cecconi, who is based in the Twin Cities (Minneapolis and St Paul for those of you not familiar with Minnesota). The evening was marvelous with especially selected wines to accompany the dinner courses. We started with a capresse salad served on a piece of cracker bread that had been drizzled with extra virgin olive oil; so simple and so simply alive with taste. As we ate the salad, Antonio told us about cooking in various regions of Italy. I can’t remember the exact order of all that followed (the wine was very good -- ;-)), but as the evening progressed we watched and learned how to make a fresh dressing for a green salad (the key is absolutely fresh herbs) and a marinade for fresh fish. We watched Antonio make linguine from scratch by hand using durum wheat flour, eggs, and a little water. The nice thing about watching someone who knows how to cook and knows how to teach is all the little hints that can make such a difference, like taking a small handful (1 serving) of linguine to form a little nest that can be frozen and used later just like fresh made pasta. Somehow the thought of making pasta from scratch is no longer as intimidating as it once was. Antonio also made an amazing sauce for the linguine using halved cherry tomatoes, garlic, fresh herbs. To this he added shrimp and jumbo fresh scallops. Once the scallops were nearly done, he added fresh tomato sauce and then let the flavors meld for a bit before pouring the entire pan of sauce over the huge serving bowl nearly filled with the fresh cooked linguine. At the same time the tuna and swordfish steaks, which had been marinating for a while, were placed in the sauté pan and cooked to just barely done before being served up alongside the pasta. Oh wait -- I forgot about the most marvelous mussels! The mussels were cooked in wine and served on another kind of wafer thin bread. The trick he showed us with mussels is that you can break apart the 2 shells and use one to scoop out the mussel from the other half and deliver it safely to your mouth. You can also scoop up some of the sauce with the shell. Then the bread below has soaked up the remaining sauce so you can savor every last drop by eating the bread. We ate the mussels after the capresse salad and before the spinach salad. At some point during the preparations and the eating, Antonio showed us a large platter of luscious strawberries that had been cored earlier. To the platter he added a very generous amount of Marsala wine so the berries could soak as we finished the main courses. For dessert, Antonio made a Zabaione sauce to pour over the Marsala-marinated strawberries. And Samantha had prepared lemoncello to accompany the dessert. All of this, along with interesting conversation, good company, surrounded by the lovely shop items made for a delightful and memorable evening. So - congratulations to you, Tony! And thank you for letting me join in the celebration.

Inspired by Antonio’s cooking, Dennis and I decided to try a recipe from his cookbook – polenta with sautéed spinach and pine nuts. We put a Belize spin on it, though. A number of years ago when visiting Tortola, BVI, we had a similar dish of polenta with local greens. They call the polenta "funghi" in the BVI. I had bought a bunch of fresh greens at the Thursday Street Fair Market in downtown Rochester. It looked to me like the greens were amaranth, although the Asian vendor didn’t know what it was called in English. In Belize you can grow amaranth, although there it is called callaloo. He did assure me that Americans do not like it, and he mostly sells it to Asians and Europeans. The massive bunch was $1.00. I also got a large bunch of what he called Thai bok choy. So we used those instead of the spinach and used toasted sesame seeds and sunflower seeds instead of pine nuts. Otherwise, we followed the recipe pretty closely (didn’t have quite enough basil on hand). We paired it with a nice red wine from Tuscany, and it was a delicious meal. I foolishly forgot to take pictures of it, so you will have to take my word for how nicely the dark green amaranth set off the golden polenta. We can add this to our growing repertoire of dishes we will be able to adapt to ingredients easily available in Belize.

Earlier in the day, I took more photos of our garden. Here is a montage of some of them. I added them to the album you can see at http://picasaweb.google.com/lulalaney/MinnesotaGardenInMidJune02#

A little excitment

We have been having some severe weather for the past few days here in the upper Midwest of the US. A couple of evenings ago, we were under a tornado warning in Rochester for quite a few hours. And 35 miles to the south of us a tornado struck the town Austin (famous for being the home of Spam canned meats!). It did considerable damage, but fortunately there was not loss of life. Here are some photos of the damage that were in the newspaper.


The other excitement was the Steve Winwood and Eric Clapton concert that Dennis and I went to in St. Paul last night. That was a fantastic experience. They played together for the entire concert except for a “solo” that each did. Steve’s voice is still super and their guitar skills remain a site to behold and a sound to savor. Our seats were in the stratosphere; we were in the absolute highest row, right up there with the hockey banners. Here are a couple of photos I took with my cell phone that give you an idea of how high we were. The good thing for us was that they had 2 massive rear projection screens so we could actually see what was happening. These and a couple of other cell phone photos can be seen on my Picasa album page: http://picasaweb.google.com/lulalaney/WinwoodClaptonInConcert#

Sunny thoughts on a Dreary Day

It has been a very cool, wet, dreary, and just generally miserable day. To remind myself that the best of summer in MN is yet to come, I revisited some photos I took of our summer garden last July. The 3 wild turkey hens were visiting with their shared broods of 11 chicks, butterflies were swarming the aesclepias, insects were everywhere, and the Jack-in-the-Pulpit had gone to seed. Below are a couple of my favorites and here is a link to the album on Picasa: http://picasaweb.google.com/lulalaney/MNWildlife#

Colorado, then Georgia

Yesterday, I wrote about our trip to Colorado to go to the Dead concert and to visit some of my family. While we were at my sister’s new place in the wilds of the CO mountains, Dennis particularly wanted to get the details on their solar panel installation, the battery bank, and the inverter for the house current. I had mentioned that they are totally off the grid, just like we are in Belize. But they are able to go a little more high tech than we are. Their house is poured concrete and their south facing window wall is a passive solar collector. This window wall lets sunlight fall on the concrete floor, which is stained a gorgeous deep swirly reddish chestnut color, collect heat and transfer it to the water pipes embedded in the concrete. Then they have a recirculator that pumps the water around so that the shaded floor can be warmed. Very cool system. And their Outback inverter is much more sophisticated than what we have in Belize. We may go with a system similar to theirs when we upgrade to mostly solar after we move to Belize permanently. Right now, we use a diesel generator to charge our battery bank, which is considerably smaller than theirs is. They have a propane generator as a backup to solar. Eventually our diesel will be the backup instead of the primary, but we are not there yet.

We did a lot of hiking while we were there. It was nice and sunny, but the wind was fierce. You can see some of the photos I took if you open my Colorado Mountains album on Picasa (http://picasaweb.google.com/lulalaney/ColoradoMountainsNearFtCollins#). But here are a few of my favorites.



On Saturday, my nephew, his wife, and their 2 terrific children came for the day. We went hiking to one of their favorite places that they have named “Crystal Mountain”. Crystal Mountain is a huge outcropping of stone that is loaded with quartz crystals. Some of them look like geodes and some are loose faceted obelisks that are clear. Very pretty and loads of fun to search for. We had a picnic lunch there. On our hike back to the house we saw coyote scat with fur and little tiny bones, a mysterious lone little speckled egg in the grass, loads of grasshoppers, and tiny little flowers almost hidden in the grass. It was a great day.

Dennis and I flew back to MN and then almost immediately left for a trip to Georgia. I gave a talk at a conference in Athens, where Dennis and I had lived for many years. We got caught up with old friends while we were there. After that we spent the weekend with my mother, who lives nearby. We spent part of a day with her at a state park in the foothills, Victoria Bryant State Park. Here are links to 2 Picasa albums from that trip: http://picasaweb.google.com/lulalaney/VictoriaBryantStateParkGA#
http://picasaweb.google.com/lulalaney/WaterLightReflectionShadow#
And below are some of my favorites.

Colorado in May

Back in May, Dennis and I went to Colorado for a loooong weekend. Our first stop was Denver to go to the (Grateful) Dead concert. Which was beyond fantastic, btw. Dennis had found a nice package deal for hotel with bus transport to and from the concert. The hotel was the newly remodeled Sheraton in downtown Denver. We flew in early enough to check into the hotel, get our wrist bands for the bus and tickets, and get settled in our room on the 19th floor (fantastic veiw of the city and mountains). We still had time to enjoy a nice glass of wine or two along with some bar food, and the weather was nice enough to be on the patio of the bar. The concert was in the Pepsi Center, which doubles as a hockey arena. Our seats were where the hockey penalty box is during games. The Dead were really at the top of their form, musically. I took these photos with my cell phone held above my head, so forgive their shakiness.

The next day we drove to Ft Collins to meet up with my sister and her husband, who were headed from Lousianna for a short stay at their soon-to-be retirement home in the CO mountains. After getting provisioned (food, wine, etc), the four of us were joined by my nephew and his wife, who live in Ft Collins, for lunch. They went back to work after lunch, but the rest of us drove into the mountains for the weekend. My sister's place is on a property easement next to Nature Conservancy wilderness. It is sort of the mountain version of our tropical place in Belize; totally off the grid, takes some effort to get to, surrounded by incredible natural beauty. The layout of their house is even similar to our cabana, with the entire front being one long room with the front wall entirely windows (in our case the room is the veranda and the windows are only screen) overlooking a spectacular view. Both houses are open with the only interior doors being bathroom doors. Each of us had bought our properties at about the same time and designed our house/cabana at the same without knowing the details of the other party. Either great minds think alike, or my sister and I inherited the same crazy gene for living at the edge, or both. ;-) Come to think of it, my brother and other sister have similar tendencies to take the path less traveled.

Later today or tomorrow I will post some photos that I took at their place. Right now I am going to enjoy some of the fabulous early summer weather here in southeastern MN.

Earthquake

In my last blog posting, I had gotten to the part where we had found and bought our property just north of Monkey River Village. We engaged the services of Sam Scott to be our building contractor, which viewed from the post-earthquake perspective, was a brilliant decision. The May 28th earthquake did some real damage to Monkey River Village and to Placencia. Most of the damage in Monkey River Village was due to ground liquification, which allowed the support posts of many houses to sink into the ground up to 8 feet. Some support posts subsided in their entirety, leaving the houses resting flat on the ground. Concrete buildings in Monkey River Village and Placencia also suffered damage with cracks and deep fissures forming. It seems that wooden structures may have fared a little better than concrete because they can flex, give, and skew with the earth’s movements without cracking apart.

So how did the Englishtown buildings fare in the earthquake? Quite well, as it turns out. None of our buildings have structural damage! Perhaps it was all the luck of the draw, but I think we, along with Sue and Chris Harris, have Sam Scott to thank for his 3 dimensional “matrix” support system that kept our buildings from subsiding. The picture below shows how our cabana is supported 12 feet above the ground on the system Sam designed. You can see the cubic spaces defined by the vertical and horizontal concrete supports. The 20 vertical supports are spaced approximately 10 feet on center. What you can’t see is that vertical supports continue into the ground for about 3 feet and have horizontal supports connecting them, also at 3 feet below the surface. This design distributes the weight of the house out over the buried horizontal supports. The weight winds up being distributed over a total of 310 sq feet instead of just 20 sq feet if the horizontal supports were omitted from the design. This means that if a portion of the ground under the cabana becomes liquefied, the remainder of the structure can still support the cabana without anything subsiding. The matrix structure also permits the sand and any liquefied soil to move around and between the supports without producing enough force to crack them. Anyway, that was the theory as Sam explained it to us, and I believe that his theory has been born out. We have 3 buildings with this support and I think Sue and Chris also have at least 3. Now you might think that Englishtown just didn’t have the same sort of shaking that Monkey River Village and Placencia did, but pictures from Sue and Chris’s house showing much of their furniture knocked over indicates that we had a lot of shaking going on in Englishtown too. And both of our docks subsided a foot or more. So all we can say is “Thanks, Sam!”

May Day

May 1, 2009

It has been a very busy 2 weeks since I last posted a blog. Major work deadlines intervened that, believe it or not, are related to the US Government Stimulus Package for research funding. The stimulus package created a number of different ways to apply for research grants funded by the National Institutes of Health, all of which had one thing in common – get the dollars into the economy as quickly as possible. That translated into quick turn around times to get grant proposals written. So imagine all across America, thousands of scientists hunkering down at their computers to write a grant proposal in a couple weeks instead of the usual several months in hopes that theirs will be one of the 200 funded. No fun at all, but wish me luck! You know what they say about lotteries– “you can't win if you don't play.”

Last time I was writing about our 2004 trip to Belize where we started out at Gales Point in the Southern Lagoon. From there we headed to Black Rock Lodge in Cayo.

We were picked up at Gales Point by a driver from Black Rock Lodge who drove us along the Manatee Highway to the Hummingbird Highway to Belmopan. At Belmopan we turned onto the Western Highway to get to San Ignacio. The drive was beautiful, and all along the Hummingbird Highway wave after wave of the wonderful smell of orange blossoms filled the van. The road to the lodge was nearly impassable by my gringa standards. In places it was no more than deep washed out tracks that threatened to rip off the undercarriage of the van. But the driver persevered and delivered us to the lodge with no damage to us or the van. The lodge was lovely. Luxurious landscaping screened the cabanas so each one felt like the only one. The outdoor covered dining room/lobby overlooked the gorge through which the Macal River runs. Dinner was family style each night, and it was always delicious. They also had a well-stocked bar where I had my very first Caipirinha, the national drink of Brazil. A Caipirinha is made with cachaça, a distilled liquor made from a by product of sugar cane processing, poured over crushed ice on top of lime slices muddled with raw sugar. They could also make a mean mohito. Birdwatching at the lodge was great. We saw our first lineated woodpeckers there starting a nest near our cabana.

We met another couple there, Sikke and Neeltje Sikkema who were visiting from France, also watching birds. The four of us went on a canoe day trip on the Macal from Black Rock to San Ignacio. The canoe was an ungainly aluminum 4 seater that weighed a ton and had the maneuverability of a school bus. The trip was great fun even though we had a run in with some aggressive overhanging tree branches when we came out of a small rapids wrong way around. My little point and shoot film camera bit the dust on that one. If you take a look at the slide show you can see water damage on the film of the last photo I took on the canoe trip. :-( We passed by herds of long horned cattle wading in the water. They disdainfully ignored us for the most part. A cow is pretty big when seen from the perspective of a canoe seat. We stopped for lunch at a posh lodge on the river and took a tour through some lovely ornamental gardens there. From there it was easy going to San Ignacio. One of the nice things about Belize is how easy it is to find kindred spirits. We have kept in touch (sporadically, I must admit) with Sikke and Neeltje and they were kind enough to host us for a several absolutely delightful days when I had a business trip to France a couple of years ago. We hope they get a chance to visit us in Minnesota before we move to Belize! And especially after we do move to Belize.

On the way to Black Rock and the way out, we passed by some properties for sale. Most of these were ranch sized with gorgeous houses and prices to match. The driver from Black Rock also drove us to Calico Jack’s at the north end of the Placencia Peninsula.

Here comes the really cool part …

We checked into Calico Jack’s and the manager (who was checking us in) asked us if we had been to the Monkey House a while back. Our mouths dropped open as we wondered how she knew. It turns out that our names had rung a bell (how many Wilmas do you know?). As you have probably figured out by now the manager was none other than Martha Scott from the Monkey House. She had been away when we were there in 1999, so we had never met. But she remembered us from the photos I had sent them of Sam and of us. So we finally got to meet Martha and she got us caught up on what happened to Sam and the Monkey House during Hurricane Iris while she was still in the states. The hurricane washed most of Monkey House away and almost washed Sam away. Sam saved himself by hanging on to a filled water vat as the storm raged around him. The storm surge at Monkey House was 16 ft. What a trauma! So with Monkey House “gone with the waves”, Martha was making ends meet working at Calico Jack’s while Sam was working on reconstructing the remains of the workshop into a liveable structure. He did a fine job of it, too. You should see it now with the workshop area converted into downstairs living space and kitchen, the dining room and sitting room overlooking the ocean, and upstairs a large bedroom, laundry room, and bathroom. The wall on the ocean side is a huge series of gorgeous mahogany louvered windows.

Talking to Martha was like talking to a long lost friend, we settled into a comfortable conversation like settling into our favorite spots on the sofa. And of course, sooner or later it came out that we were looking for property to buy. Martha made some phone calls to Monkey River Village and arranged for Ralph Zuniga, an excellent tour guide, to show us property owned by Sonny Garbutt. Long story short, we wound up buying 2 blocks from Sonny in Englishtown. It took a year to get it all settled, most of which was long distance communication with our lawyer in Belize. Another cool aspect of this is that the 2 blocks we bought from Sonny had originally been deeded to his ancestors by Queen Victoria.

Sonny had 6 blocks for sale. Now these blocks had seen quite a bit of damage from Hurricane Iris and were filled with downed trees and regrown jungle. The land here is fairly low, so we needed to check out which lots had the best features. At this point Dennis was about 17 days post knee surgery, so I volunteered to check out the literal lay of the land. The jungle had grown up so densely that I had to weave my way in three dimensions almost like a snake to get back into the lots. I was looking for standing water (bad) and hardwood trees like gumbo limbo (good). The southernmost lot were the lowest, but the 4 other lots were all pretty good. We selected what we thought were blocks 5 and 6 when counting from the southernmost lot. The approximate center of the blocks we selected could be identified from the sea by a tall tree covered with Devil’s Guts epiphytic cactus. There were various mis-communications, mis-measurements, mis-adventure, that ultimately resulted in us actually purchasing blocks 4 and 5. This was the best thing that could have happened for us. It turns out there is a legal battle over block 6. I am so glad that we did not wind up in the middle of that. So here’s to mis-communication, mis-measurements, and mis-adventure! May they live long so we can prosper!

Stay tuned for the next post when we start planning what to do on the lots. Until then enjoy May Day weekend.