Yesterday we took a trip up to Mt. Lemon. It’s only about 25 miles from the house and something we love to do, but strangely don’t do it very often. The weather temperature is so refreshing – Yun had to wear a jacket!
The scenery and smell of the pines are my favorite things.
I bought a new HD camcorder yesterday and brought it with me. It was cheap and is compact. I love it and see myself filming a lot more of life.
Stepped outside tonight to see a family of javalinas eating some weeds in the front yard. We’ve seen them a few times in this neighborhood since we’ve moved here. They are apparently as abundant as the coyotes.
When we crossed the border a couple weeks ago on our way home from Guaymas, we met Jesus while we were waiting at the border. He was selling tortillas. We crossed around 11pm on a school night. Jesus sells the tortillas his mom makes each night to support his family. He lives in the Buenos Aires district. This is a dangerous part of town. He walks home by himself each night after the tortillas are sold.
Jesus reminds me of a little 9-year-old boy we met at the border a few years back. He sold doughnuts with his younger sister all night to support his family. The little boy told us he tried to go to school during the day, but undoubtedly he won’t last in school being out all night working.
I was sitting in the back seat when I took this photo.
One thing we really enjoy living in the North of Tucson is taking walks. The dogs surely love this more than we do. It has been a hot summer, but with the monsoons, it cools down quite a bit in the evening. It rained hard at the house tonight. Once it stopped, we took a walk.
I love the smell of the desert after a rain and the various cactus that grow in abundance everywhere.
Unfortunately, it started to rain while on our walk so we had a long run home….
Last night we had 40+ people over for a fundraising dinner in an effort to help raise money for a trip for a short-missions trip to Honduras. We were able to raise a good sum of money and had a lot of fun with so many people in the house. We came to the conclusion that 40-50 people is about the maximum capacity for dinner inside the house. We could have another 100+ people over if we could have people sit outside. Unfortunately, it is far too hot for such things these days.
The first course was a pan-fried quesadilla from hand-made tortillas and hand-made cheese. After that was a delicious bean and tortilla soup. We offered two main courses: enchilada or chilles rellenos. For dessert we had flan and chocoflan. Beverages consisted of horchata, jamaica, and a lemonade/cucumber drink that was surprisingly awesome.
I would definitely like to do this again sometime soon.
Roughly 2 years ago (Aug. 1st, 2009), Yun and I went hiking up Mt. Lemon with the dogs. I wrote about it here. On that little adventure, we found some cactus that we liked, so we dug it up and brought it home to plant.
Here is the photo from 2009:
And here is a photo of it today:
It’s getting big. Not the fastest growth, but it will be impressive in a couple more years. We have thought about adding it to the landscaping of the new house when we get to that point. I think it is called an Argentine Hedgehog
We have done the same with a number of other desert plants we have found. I started two more today.
This little one was found near the house we’re currently living in – it looks nearly dead. I planted it in a bucket. At least you can see roots, so perhaps there’s hope. Its hard for me to tell, but I think this is a Paleleaf Yucca.
This other one I snapped off from a cactus already flourishing. I have no idea how one properly propagates one of these things, so I am hoping that simply placing a piece of it in a pot will yield success. It might be an Argentine Hedgehog, but it is significantly thinner.
We ran out of our dry dog food last week – but prior to that we had been mixing in some wet stuff. Basha’s grocery store unfortunately doesn’t have the regular kidneys and livers and random pieces of animal that the dogs love, so we had to try something new. We went with the turkey giblets and turkey necks. The neck has a lot of vertebrae, so it’s a bit of pain to prepare for consumption. I probably won’t go that route again any time soon.
Tila loved it though.
I’ve never been an enormous seafood fan, but recent trips here have grown my appreciation for it. We discovered the market in Guaymas last year and along with it, good fresh food.
On Friday, we picked up a couple kilos of shrimp and a kilo of scallops. The shrimp I love, but I wasn’t so sure about the scallops. I wasn’t aware scallops were caught in the area. The guy selling them prepared one raw with salt, salsa, and lemon. It was incredibly good and was enough to persuade me to by a kilo of those as well.
That’s a lot of seafood. The dogs are fans too. Yesterday Scout was found catching a fairly decent size entity from the sea. We also found a number of small sardine looking fish which were caught by hand that the dogs inhaled.
The market has a section for butchers. Last time we were there we were given some enormous bones for the dogs at no charge. They chewed on them for months and we actually still have them back at home. This time we paid 10 pesos (roughly a dollar) for 10 bones that had a good amount of meat on them. This sort of thing would run about $5 each back home. What a deal.
It almost looked like it was going to rain last night. It probably did out at sea just off the coast. It was beautiful and the temperature came down a bit (it has been extremely hot). This helped build our appetites for a nice dinner at Bonifacio’s in San Carlos. The food was exceptional and this place remains our favorite.
