The Australian blue-claw crayfish 

Sami and Greg checking on the great crayfish escape 

Sami looking good 

it took almost twice what they estimated 

delivering garden soil mix 

delivery complete 

the plile of rocks to be moved 

red 

more 

white 

an orchid tree in el Jardin 

blue 

dessert in yellow flowe 

Restless Natives

Sami got off back to Montreal on Wednesday morning. He said he had a good time and I certainly enjoyed having him around. He is very interested in “integral living” - he has a hydroponics set-up in his apartment integrated with a small fish farm, and is planning to buy a small property and build a straw-bale house it. He says I am living in an ideal place to take advantage of passive energy and he left me with many ideas on how to integrate the sun into my energy requirements. It will be my energy that is short probably.

He advised me to get some crayfish for my pond as they would integrate with the fish I plan to get, eventually. Since we had seen live crayfish at a local restaurant we went and bought 4 bucks worth - which got us five Australian blue claws. You would not believe the resources on the net for the would-be crayfish enthusiast! From sights like “Crayfish World” you can learn more than you ever wanted to know about crayfish. It turns out these little critters are not very nice at all. They hate each other and prefer to hide by themselves in caves, they kill fish, eat all water plants and are master escape artists. We found two of them out of the pond within the first couple of hours and had to lower the level of the water to keep them inside!

Greg was very fascinated by the little critters and spent endless time watching them and nearly choking himself to death straining over the edge of the pond to get a closer look. He was less impressed that we were feeding them his food. By the time Sami left two had died and with any luck the rest will meet a similar fate in the days ahead.

The local San Juan de Dios community association invited everyone to a meeting the other night to participate in the convocation for the new lights being erected in the church plaza and discuss how the community can further improve the surrounding park and atrium. The new lights cap off a significant renovation of the park that has been going on for a couple of weeks including resetting brick and stone work around the park and church plaza, painting the church and renovating the earth around some of the trees.

A cadet band made up of drummers and a few horns provided the military-type honor-guard for the event and I took the opportunity to go inside the church for the first time to listen and watch. It is a quite impressive 16th century building. There were maybe 150 there for the mass and we learned something to the effect that God was watching us at all times and that the new lights would be a great help in this regard.

The real reason for the meeting however was to learn that maintenance of the park, the church and the surrounding plaza is a joint effort between the city government, the church and the community and that they really needed help from local citizens to complete the work being done. In particular they were recruiting people to help them move a giant pile of rocks from where they have been dumped by the city to where they are required around the trees a few hundred feet away. I wanted to convey to the young recruiter that I had enough of my own rocks to move around and that what they really should do was pick up the local hoodlums that keep throwing rocks at my car when I park it on a back street and get them to move the rocks, but I resisted. Instead I will probably drop by tomorrow afternoon and help them move some of their damn rocks.

March 4 is “Our Lord of the Conquest” celebration in SMA, a Christ image bestowed on the town in the early 1500’s by King Philip V to help in the evangelization effort. Local artisans created the image at the time from the school of father Juan of San Miguel. Tradition was that indigenous people would perform laments to this image, commemorating the day when they welcomed God into their hearts. The laments turned into a tradition of crying, which apparently reached a sort of crescendo that was so loud that the priest in charge in 1915 prohibited crying - so now it is prayers only. The celebrations are marked by a series of parades and dances by indigenous groups around the Paroquia throughout the day. These costumed dancers resemble Canadian Indians significantly except one guesses they are all back at their day jobs at the local telecom or whatever when their dancing gig is complete. Fireworks of course mark the evening, giving Greg significant heartburn.

They have turned my street into a carnival this weekend with small rides for children and very loud music and dancing for the adults. The usual taco stands and candyfloss are prominent and many of the dancers are sporting elaborate clown costumes and masks. I am not sure what it all means. The strong suspicion is that the natives are gearing up for Easter (Semana Santa) – the most elaborate of fiestas of the year.

February is planting month as the warm weather returns and the blossoms appear mysteriously on virtually every plant. An elaborate garden sale in the botanical park marks the time in SMA – everything you can imagine for the garden. The surrounding dessert is suddenly alive with yellow bloom on all of the mesquite scrub and cactus as far as the eye can see.