A Different Space

As most of you know, I do a lot of house/critter sitting around Culebra. It's always fun to step into someone's home space and renew acquaintance with my vicarious pets, like being a Grandma to a slew of four-legged children where I get the (mostly) fun parts and then go home later on. 

This place is full of beauty of another sort than wide open vistas of the bays and the sea. Nature's bounty...well, abounds.

I've never seen wood fungi like this monster here before.
It's big, much bigger than a dinner plate.

With all the rain, there is so much in bloom or sprouting new leaves. While on the boat rain coming and going means close a door, a hatch, open a door, a hatch, here it just means things are growing so fast you can almost watch it happen. My need to play in the dirt is being muy satisfied!

I've never seen (or maybe just never really noticed) the blossoms of the tamarind tree. They are so delicate, so orchid like, almost barely there. And yet they are, the forerunner of the tamarind fruit. A not so beautiful pod, it is like the growth of a butterfly, backwards; first the interesting but often, not so attractive chysalis becoming a resplendent butterfly. It's big in nutritional benefits and not unlike those foods that you either love or hate, lamb, raw oysters, lima beans. When I worked for Susie years back, we made tamarind sorbet and I don't think anyone was disappointed, whether they knew what it was or not. If you have a tamarind tree in your yard, or you have a friend with one, check out some of these Asian inspired tamarind recipes from The Kitchn. 

Simple beauties.

Something is enjoying the leaves of this bogie.

Or not so simple at all. 

Nearby is a horse who has a name I've forgotten. I forgot it almost immediately. I call him Mr. Ed because he's quite talkative. He's not as funny though. But he's gentle and loves a good scratching. I feed him those fat carrots we get, which he also seems to love. I thought he'd take the quarter broken off for him in one bite but no, he breaks off delicate bits and savors each bite. I think about how delicately he uses his soft lips to maneuver it into place, how strong his teeth and jaws are, to bite off just a bit at a time of a carrot so big and dense it's almost impossible to just break a piece off. He's great entertainment.

He likes his water too.

Hummingbirds, chickens, lizards of all stripes and sizes and of course the dogs and cats, all unique. None of them disagree with anything I say, all of them have things to say that have no level of anything but the be here now of life. It's restful. 

Tonight is the lighting of the Christmas lights in town, one of my favorite nights of the year. Not a lot of tourists, a lot of people out on the street, the feeling of community strong. Except for making sure there is air in the tires, there's not a lot of primping involved, at least on my part. If you can be there, see you then!

Have a fanciful Friday. Do something fresh.