Casita Chuparosa

I’m happy to say we saw the big green iguana in our yard again. There are basically two types of iguanas around here — black and green. The black one’s are green when they are young though. So far, we have seen at least four different iguanas in the yard.

Blackie is a small black iguana that first appeared last May, and has lived here constantly ever since. Blackie is about 30 cm long, not counting the tail. Greenie is a small green one, maybe 25 cm,  not sure if it is an immature black iguana or will remain green. Was here for much of October and November, but then disappeared. Mixie is a bit larger than Blackie, probably 40 cm, and mottled with grays and greens, probably a black iguana in color transition. Big Green is about 60 cm long, plus a tail that looks longer than the body (the tails are usually about the same length as the body — this one looks extra long. Big Green appeared for a few days in early December, but we hadn’t seen it since — until today.

I have pictures I’ll post in the  future of most these, but the big one is too shy to let me close enough for a good picture. Blackie, on the other hand, strikes poses when he sees me out with the camera.

For the first few months we were living here we had a turtle in the yard. I like to deep-water the lemon tree, mango tree and bananas, so I often leave the water on, running at just a trickle. In the high-clay soil here that is often enough for the water to pond-up a little, just a centimeter or so, usually. Turtle seemed to like that.

One day, I found him at the front gate trying to leave. He wouldn’t fit under the gate though, even though he could stick his head under it and look out. Just a road and traffic out there — not a safe place for a turtle. I flopped him (or her, or it) over and took this picture of the underside, which some turtleologist out there will undoubtedly recognize.

Myrtle our turtle

Then I flipped it back upright, and waited about two minutes before it began to emerge — first the head (and hence this photo:)

Myrtle emerges and scans the area for threats

Then the feet hit the ground and off he went, back into the yard. We don’t have any dogs, so the yard is really the safest place for a turtle, but we also don’t have another turtle, so maybe it was lonely. Just before Christmas it disappeared, probably through a gap in the neighbor’s fence. Just hope it didn’t end up as soup for one of the neighbors.

The coastline along this part of Colima is well known as a nesting ground for sea-turtles. Some of the poor fisher-folk who live more from their catch than from a traditional cash economy find the turtle eggs a rich supplement to their piscine diet. Most of them know that if they get caught they will get in trouble, but since the police don’t patrol the beaches at night, it is unlikely they will get caught.

There are environmental groups that do patrol the beach, and since they have no legal authority to stop poachers, they try to beat them at their own game, digging up fresh nests whenever one is found, and moving the eggs to safe area of beach that is fenced and guarded.

NOTE: for those that scan, but don’t read. This post mentions sea-turtles. The pictures are not of a sea-turtle — duh!

Well I have been seriously neglecting this blog, haven’t I? No excuses.

In October and November we had a screened ‘porch’ added on to the back of the casita. I’m not sure porch is the right word, since it isn’t raised off the ground. Really it’s more of a covered and screened sandbox. Kind of brings the beach right to our doorstep…

The framework is of palm wood, with roof slats of a softer wood. Right now the roof is a plastic sheet that has been painted white on top — both to reduce the UV light, which causes the plastic to break-down, and to reflect the heat. We really should replace that with heavy duty canvas, but when we were looking for canvas we couldn’t find anyplace that sold it around here.

Watching the workmen construct the thing was great entertainment. Near as I can figure, there are three rules they follow:

1. If anything needs cutting (including large posts) just use the machete.
2. If anything needs attaching (including door hinges!) just use nails.
3. Never measure or align anything, straight lines are ugly.

So we have a sturdy wood frame, covered with a plastic roof on wood slats spaced close enough together to support tejas (those red clay roof-tiles), with sides covered by screen and floored with sand. Not the prettiest thing you ever saw, but it works wonderfully, and only cost about $500 U.S.

Here’s a picture of Jorge on the roof attaching the main beams to the frame.

Jorge adds rafters to the framed porch area

When Isabel’s family visited in January, I had the opportunity to really see how well it worked, since I slept one night in my hammock there — no mosquitoes or flies bothered me all night. Good thing for my brother-in-law as he was snoring so much in the other hammock that the back-draft would have sucked in a flotilla of bugs, had there been any.

Here is another view, through the front door of the porch, showing the hammocks. The wooden table at left is where we eat most of our meals. We like to sit out at night, listening to the night-sounds of the village and various critters.

Inside of the porch from the door

My biochar kiln doesn’t work correctly because the door does not seal tight, and too much air can get in, and smoke and gasses get out. To make charcoal or biochar, you need a fairly air-tight container, or the contents will just burn to ash.

First burn of the biochar kiln, showing escaping smoke around door

For a fix, I decided to use the old trick traditional cooks use when they want to keep moisture from escaping from a clay pot — more clay. Wet clay can be used to seal the lid. That should work on my kiln too. It doesn’t need to be 100% effective, just 90 or 95% will be enough.

But where am I to get clay? I’ve seen layers of clay in soil profiles in a lot a places I’ve lived, but we haven’t been here long enough to know where those kind of places are in this area. Probably plenty up in the mountains that are a 15 minute drive away, but I don’t even need to go that far.

Soon after we bought this place I tested the soil to see how much clay, silt, gravel and sand was present. That is a simple process (if you don’t need super-accurate results). I put a handful of dirt in a glass jar, added enough water to fill it, put on the cap and gave it a good shake. Then set it down. Most of what settles to the bottom immediately is gravel or sand. Above that is a layer that falls in the next 30 to 60 seconds, and that is silt. Everything else is clay, which can take hours or even days to settle completely. Our soil has about 50% clay content, 30% silt and 20% sand.

So the same process can be used to extract the clay from the soil. I filled a bucket half-full with soil, then added water and stirred it up good. I let it settle just 60 seconds, then poured the slurry into another bucket, without the sediment. After a few hours, the second bucket had settled (the clay is not so fine as to take days), and I poured as much of the clear water off as I could, which also takes away most of the plant rootlets and other floating organic materials. The thick slurry that was left I poured into a flat tray and set it out in the sun to dry off. That is all fairly-pure clay. When the water content gets to the right level I can twirl a chunk between my hands and make a rope-like strand, just as you would if you were making a coiled pot. That will seal the kiln just fine.

We now have three clumps of bananas. The biggest one, and the only one to flower so far, produces little apples. No, really, that’s what they call them. They are short, fat, sweet little bananas, and the local name in Spanish is manzanitas, which translates as little apples. But that is not what they make manzanita tea from, that comes from a different sort of plant altogether. But still nothing to do with apples.

Here is a picture of the papery flowers, each at the end of a new little banana. The purple sheath that encloses the newborn bananas makes a dramatic visual impact against the broad green leaves of the plant. As you can see from the photo, we have a coconut palm that took root near the base of the banana plants. Before we bought this place that was one of the few spots on the property to be watered regularly during the dry season — the coconut was one of four left there to root, with the apparent intention of replanting them elsewhere. When we found them, this one was too large to move, but we transplanted two others, and the fourth never sprouted.

Manzanita bananas with flowers

When we were here in May I cut some tree branches, browned banana leaves, and raked up some leaves from the fig tree to start a little compost pile. When we came back in October, there was a banana plant growing out of the middle of that pile. Not sure how that got there, or exactly what kind of bananas we will get from it, but I bet they grow faster than the ‘2nd clump’ as I call them.

The 2nd clump were just out of reach of the water hose when we came in May (I brought a longer hose this time!), and it has not gotten any fertilization. It did grow over the rainy season, but has yet to produce any fruit. The soil is very black, but mostly clay, and while some weeds grow prolifically, the bananas are lacking something in their nutrients needed for producing fruit.

The clump of plants in the photo get fish, chickent bones and other such goodies for fertilizer. Anything we can’t compost that is biodegradable, we bury in little holes, about 15 cm wide and 40 cm deep, with the top half of the hole filed with back-dirt, so they are too deep for the stray cats to dig them back up. Our first batch of holes have been located around that clump of bananas, about a meter away from the plant. One more such hole and we will move on to the 2nd clump.