Merry Christmas and Life

Hi Everyone and a belated Merry Christmas.

I was going to post this yesterday but as usual life got in the way. In the morning my partner had a bad fall and in the evening our new puppy was bitten by a scorpion. My partner is going to be okay just a lot of bruising and cuts and a couple of open wounds that are going to take a while to heal and the puppy (Oliver) got off very lucky and did not get much venom from the bite so it has left him with a cough and slowed him down a bit. The slowed down bit we will be a welcome rest but the little bugger scared the life out of us because when he was first bit he raced around the house wailing and thrashing his head about.

Anyway here is a picture of Oliver.

These are two pictures of the tree that was put up by the locals at the end of our gravel and very rough road. I really like how they made there upcycled tree with used beer cans pretty crafty don't you think. The tree is about 12 feet tall.

Where Has The Time Gone

I cannot believe that more than 2 months have past since my last post. We have become more involved with all the expat activities and in this area there are at least 2 things going on so we are trying things to see if we like them and it is keeping us busy. Also the hummingbirds are almost a full time job.

Now for some sad news here is where I was going to post a picture of some Tatting I just finished. The problem is that my phone died last week and the photo was on it and I have already given it away so no chance of getting a picture but I am getting bit by the Tatting bug again so it should not be too long before I have a picture to show you. Instead of the picture here is a quote that caught my attention.

Having a soft heart in a cruel world 

is courage, not weakness.

HPLYRIKZ.com

Feeding Frenzy 2

Feeding Frenzy

I am posting this from Youtube in case the other videos do not work. 

Hummingbird Feeding Frenzy

This is the story of our Hummingbird feeding frenzy. We first started out with a single 4 port feeder and it was commandeered by a single Hummingbird so we put up 2 of them. This resulted in a few coming on a regular basis so we decided to put up a third and this is when it started to become a feeding frenzy. We would have 10 to 20 Hummingbirds buzzing about and the feeders would have to be changed 3 to 5 times a day so we decided to get bigger feeders so that we did not have to change them so often so the new feeders hold 4 cups of nectar and have 10 feeding ports each. These are working out great but now we have a hoard of different types of Hummingbirds coming and they are draining these feeders 3 times a day but they provide so much entertainment that we are committing ourselves to keeping these going. This means making a stock pot of nectar a day and going through 75 to 80 pounds of sugar a month. I think after you watch the videos you will feel the same way about them as we do. They are a great source of entertainment for a reasonable price. The feeders are made by First Nature from Amazon.com and can be found by pushing the link. They do not have the yellow flowers on them as they attract bees. If you decide to start feeding Hummingbirds please do not feed them the red nectar. Instead make your own. The recipe is simple it is 1 cup of white sugar mixed with 4 cups of water. Do not add red food coloring as it harms the birds and is not needed. Bring to a boil and then allow to cool. Store in your refrigerator and be sure to change the nectar every 3 or 4 days if it lasts that long and be sure to give the feeders a good wash and rinse before refilling. To clean the feeding ports the easiest thing to use is a pipe cleaner. 

The first video is taken from our kitchen window. 

The other 1 shows the color of the birds better and I apologize ahead of time as the camera had some focusing issues but the videos are worth a watch. Hope you enjoy.

Our Home

As promised here are a few pictures of the outside of our home. The grass was cut the day I took the pictures and when they cut the grass here they use a weed eater and take it down to ground level but in just a couple days it is green and thriving again. The first picture is the view we have from the back deck. Unfortunately the picture does not do it justice.

This is looking at our back deck.

This is one corner of our property that has a giant pear cactus, palm tree and monster lemon tree growing on it with a lily in front.

  
This lily puts up three stalks of flowers with 8 to 15 blooms on each.

  
Side view of our house.

This is the front with some of our collection of plants. 

These are the neighbors chickens which love to come to our property looking for a snack.

Hope you enjoyed these and my next post will be an update on our Hummingbirds with hopefully a video attached if I can figure out how to do it.

Long Overdue

Yes this post is long overdue but life has not been treating me very kindly the past number of weeks but I am back now feeling much better. For this post I wanted to post a couple more orchid pictures but one of these are different than my regular orchid pictures because one of the these is growing on the May Apple Tree that is growing in our front yard. Also there are pictures of what is growing all around the trunk of the tree. On the next next post I will post a picture of the front and surroundings of our home in Panama.

The orchids on the tree.

 This is where the orchids are on the tree.

Here is the whole side of the tree.

This is the other side

Orchids in Bloom and a Cute Little Guy

The nice thing about living in Boquete, Panama is that you can have as many orchids as you want and not have to worry about what you are going to do with them when the weather turns cold. Also we are living in the land of orchids. You see them growing on trees everywhere. The really nice thing is that they are cheap to buy, often less than $ 10.00. We are starting a collection and some of them are in bloom right now so I thought I would share a few pictures.

Oh and the cute little guy is this green cutie who was near one of the orchids.

Hoards of Humming Birds

It all started with one Humming Bird feeder and a Humming Bird who would not share the feeder so we put up a second Humming Bird feeder and were having about five Humming Birds coming so I put up a third Humming Bird feeder and now we have hoards of them. The most I have counted around the feeders are seventeen Humming Birds. We now have eight species of Humming Birds coming and they are draining all of the the feeders twice a day. It is really nice to be able to sit on our back deck and enjoy the show these guys put on for us. I hope you enjoy the pictures.

I Hate Mistakes

Well I was putting off posting until I had finished the last round on the doily I am Tatting. I finished it last night and was looking at it this morning and realized that there were two mistakes in it so I had to cut off the final round and start again because I hate mistakes in my Tatting. I hope to get enough time this week to do it again and will post it as soon as it is finished.

Bye for now.

Yah!!!!! Tatting

I finally have some Tatting to show you. This is the first two rounds of Flowery Meadow Doily from the book Tatting Patterns and Designs by Gun Blomqvist and Elwy Persson. I am using Lizbeth size 40 thread 138 Leafy Greens for the chains and 668 Orchid Green Dark.

Last of the Orchid Pictures

This will be the last of the orchid pictures and the next post will be Tatting.

More Orchids

As promised here are some more photographs of Orchids.

Boquete Orchid Show

Hi Everyone.

This past weekend we went to the annual Orchid Show in Boquete Panama and saw a lot of beautiful orchids and Bromeliads so I thought that over the next week or two I would show some of the pictures I took. Enjoy.