A Chicken Condo Takes Shape (Gallinas Only)

Just a few months ago, the wall to the left of the house (Pan American Highway on the other side) looked like this. A one-time chicken coop, now fallen to pieces, had sprouted a large squash plant that eventually took over the yard and the lime tree to the left, and produced all of one squash, which fell prey to insects before I got to it.

Here's what's left now:

And Phase One of the new chicken coop is now in place. Next week, if I can afford the good stuff, we'll go and buy the malla, the mesh fencing. Chicken wire is cheap and ungalvanized. The stuff I put around my veggie garden is mainly rust now, and full of holes, and doesn't keep a single dog from running through my zucchinis. 

Maria José's husband Jonathan is building this project, and will also separate out a space for my planned cabra, a nanny goat.  I've heard there are Rhode Island Reds for sale in a town near here called Niquinohomo (Nicky-nomo), and a friend has a connection at a nearby farm with goats. There will be no gallos (roosters) in this convent. They are brutish to the hens and enforce a pecking order that is painful to observe. 

The post to the left below leads back to the next tree for the chicken run and shade. Nesting box is along the wall. Water and feed dispensers will hang from the roof support.

I sort of liked the original falling down coop, but it wouldn't hold a single chicken, would it?

Winter is About to Arrive, but Here, They Call it Summer.

This two-season climate is in transition: the luxuriant verdure and near daily downpours are giving way to denuded deciduous trees and the hint of a dryer landscape. Yesterday, for perhaps the last time this year, the road beautification crew, with their machetes, weed-whackers and rakes, passed by in the early morning. The noise excited the dogs, and I happily brewed a thermos of coffee with milk and sugar (yuck...) and headed out to the road. The gang were grateful for the break, and, truthfully or not, all proclaimed my coffee superb!

Daily, the massive tecca leaves come crashing through the branches like two-by-fours!  I hear the first high crash, and subsequent knocks before they hit the ground, sounding for all the world like ogres on tiptoe. I spent an hour or two daily stuffing the leaves into large plastic garbage bags on Saturday, and Byron finished the job on Sunday and puts the sacks outside the wall for pickup on Tuesday.

Finally, as the canopy thins, I have a chance to see the birds who call so alluringly in the morning. I have whistled back and forth with birds I cannot see, and finally, I have the hope of catching sight of my correspondents. This morning, an oriole appeared. There is also a species of robin, dubbed rather accurately a "brown robin," but with the same hopping style, head cocked to hear a worm under the surface.

Election day is coming up on 6 November. I have been advised to lay in whatever I'll need for both it and the day after, as all will be closed down, locked up tight - stores, buses, etc. Does the whole country stop to count the votes?  Nobody here seems politically involved or empowered by the vote. They accept the fact that Ortega may well be president for life, and though they complain about the corruption, they feel resigned to its reality. I registered to be an absentee voter for the US elections on the 8th, but when I log on to download the ballot. my lousy internet refuses to drill down the extra layers. I have asked Somerset County for assistance, with no response.

The vista is lightening up as the leaves fall, but flowers still bloom and the mercury is still in the 80s!

Adventures in Health, An Aging Revolutionary and Stinging Caterpillars!

For months, I have delayed visiting an oncologist for a five-year (now almost six) checkup after having treatment for breast cancer. No reason, except that I had no referral or professional recommendation to give me confidence in someone's medical judgment. It turns out that my landlady is a radiologist for the National Police hospital in Managua, and she was kind enough to refer me to Yolanda, an oncologist specializing in gynecological (read "female") cancers. I had a good appointment with her, an exam, and she ordered the usual tests: blood, x-ray, sonogram, and mammogram.

Baptist Hospital is a modern facility, not part of the free national health system. I had the chest x-ray, sonogram, and bloodwork there. In Nicaragua, results do not go automatically to your physician; when the results are in, they give them to you to take to your doctor. A mammogram and an additional CT scan of a pulmonary nodule revealed by the xray were done at a clinic, all for cash, roughly $580 for everything. Imagine a Cat Scan for $300!

That scan is the worrisome part. The breast cancer status looks pretty good, all around. Today, I will go to the clinic to collect the scan results and take them straightaway to Yolanda. Fingers crossed.*


All this two-week period partially explains my lack of blog postage lately, To add to my salutary woes, I slipped in the compost pile and slammed my noggin against a stone wall. I remember very little after that. Fatima, my neighbor, heard me cry out, and she called Maria Jose to come right away, Fatima's husband drove us to the national health hospital in Jinotepe, where I was given an IV sedative and spent a few hours being observed. I remember none of what occurred there. Apparently, we took a taxi home, and I vaguely recall buying dinner for Maria's family, as she had had no time to prepare anything. I suspected a concussion, so I slept for four days.

Sergio Ramirez

This past Tuesday, I attended a little chat presentation at Keiser U. with noted Nicaraguan author, FSLN political activist and first post-revolutionary Vice-president Sergio Ramirez. He was born a few miles from the university, in Masatepe. He told a few well-worn stories and took questions about contemporary literature - I could not understand every word, so I missed some things. I met him briefly nearly 30 years ago when I was on my first visit here.

We have been overwhelmed with caterpillars!

Stinging Caterpillars


and





Geometridae, who hang out on my screen door.


* P.S. It turns out that a brief relationship with tuberculosis and a year of treatment are responsible for the nodule that has appeared in my left lung. My 30-year smoking history that ended 15 years ago is invisible in my clear healthy lungs. I am invincible!