Some photos from our house (remember you can click on them for a larger picture.)
One of the many beautiful tiny moths we've seen this summer, its wingspan is probably less than an inch. This one is sitting on a dishwashing sponge in the kitchen sink.
Happy taking a nap.
A picture from our balcony railing. You can see Louie the Cat sitting more or less top-center.
Jocko on the balcony sniffing a yellow rose.
Jed the Cat on the balcony
Succulents and ferns and other stuff on our balcony.
Heliconia as seen through a gap in our tall, gnarled nopal on the other side of our balcony rail.
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Rita our very old dog of 17 1/2 years started to slide downhill fast. She developed a cough that she only got relief from when she slept. She looked scared, even panicky, sometimes seeming not sure where she was. We took her to see Marco Antonio, our vet. He said that her lung capacity was much diminished and that she would die soon. He gave her a shot of something magical, and we doubled her dose of cortisone. The next day she seemed much improved. Old Iron Heart was what she was.
On August 12, though, it was clear life held little good for Rita. We had made an appointment with Marco Antonio to euthanize her at our house, and then when she seemed better during the day, we cancelled it. Then, on Wednesday, we realized holding on to her life was not any good for her. We took her down to Marco Antonio's office. He gave her two shots: one to calm her and one to put her to sleep forever. We brought her back to our house where Guillermo had dug her grave. Jim put her in it and arranged her, oh so gently until it seemed she was comfortable. We shovelled dirt on her, Jim much more than I. The last he saw of her was her pointed ear poking out. before he covered her completely. She is the third dog we have buried behind our house. Life and death, never far from each other.
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A couple of Thursdays ago we went to the market at the Church of San Jose in Xalapa. I don't know how many years this market has been held. We visited it often when we stayed in Roy Dudley's rentals during our summers in Xalapa. We hadn't been to it since we moved here.
Our first visit happened because of a death. We had had supper with Rocío Sagaón and her husband, George Vinaver in a Xalapa restaurant. Friends whom we'd met when we first visited here, they lived in an extraordinary and beautiful family compound just outside the city. It was accidental and a great treat that we came across them at a small concert at the Universidad Veracruzana. We wandered over to a little French bistro sort of place where we ate good food while George peppered us with his sharp and funny comments. That was on a Friday. He died on Saturday night, quietly, in his sleep, of heart failure. He was 74. It is ultimately what we all die from, I guess. We asked what was appropriate to bring when we went to visit Rocío to pay our respects on Monday. White flowers, we were told. We bought big bunches of white chrysanthemums at the Mercado San Jose and brought them up to the house.
Below are a few pictures I took during our recent visit to the Mercado, ten years or more after our last one.
A woman passing a plastics vendor.
Some people dress up on market day.
Flower stall
I think the thing on top is a broccoli-cauliflower mix. The fruit is guayaba. I wish I could include their smell for you. I love it.
A shoe store at the edge of the market. There are a lot of shoe stores around. The shoes in this store would be pretty uncomfortable to walk around the Mercado in.
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Rocío died on August 16 of this year.
She was a remarkable woman. There is a Wikipedia entry in Spanish here.