JULY 2006: "Just when you thought it was safe...!?!?" [...continued]
Our next stop on the Casa Ingaso sleigh ride is a "walkabout."
Yup, that's me in my Wellingtons, well, a Panamania version that actually fit and were given to me by Bob and Dee Braden—during the rainy season, boots are most advantageous, at least if you don't want mud between your toes. "Yah-uuck!"
At any rate, at first we started walking the property to check for rain damage—we need to control erosion as much as possible, plus we want to see how our erosion controls already in place are performing. Then, as the animals all took such great pleasure in following us on our inspection tours, we took to calling our little forays walkabouts. And there is no surer way to find out where everyone is than to start one, then wait for the others to catch up. (Click me to begin...)
Kinda hand-in-hand with walkabouts, weather is the next theme, as in what can happen during the course of one day. We definitely enjoy the rainy season more than the dry, and part of that enjoyment is its changeability. There is nothing boring about Panamanian rainy seasons: if you don't like the weather, wait ten minutes. I can't tell you how many times we've sat on the terrace and just watched the weather. In California, that would require the use of serious mind-altering substances, it would be so boring. But here, the weather is its own mind-altering substance; need I remind you of the lightning strike on picacho!
What I love about all this is the temperature remains between 70°F and 83°F, or so—it's gone higher on rare occasions, but never over 88°F at Ingaso, plus the lower 70s are the exclusive purview of the night, when the sleeping is all right. And that's why I'm here.
Okay, for our last batch of photos, I give you garden-lovers yard pictures! And not just more boring pictures of the same old views (like the overworked image on the left), but boring pictures of plants and blooms and trees, oh my! Nonetheless, the problem is, and TC will back me up on this, the property is so big it seems like all the planting in the world gets lost on it.
Still, green is ascendant, and to look out over the lot and see more green than red soil is a pure, unadulterated pleasure. (Part of the reason the allee bothers me is the return of ugly construction processes and red soil.) At any rate, I do love TC's gardening efforts!
And that concludes our little interlude for now. No doubt I'll be back to haunt your inbox some day in the not too distant future...
"Ciao, amigos and amigas!"
(Strange as it seems, "ciao" is ubiquitously used in Panama. Go figure.)