After a month of heavy rains, it is starting to dry out around here. The sun keeps sneaking out and the temps are back to the 70’s – 80’s and all the plants are loving it. There are still light showers predicted every day for another week or so, but that just means we don’t need to water the garden.

With all the rains we had last month it brought out a couple creatures we’ve never seen here before. We have seen a lot of different types of frogs and toads around here but this one was a little different.

It’s a Mexican burrowing toad. It has a very small head with tiny eyes and red, yellow, or orange coloring on its back. They live most of the time underground and only come out after a heavy rain. An interesting fact about this toad is that their tongue projects straight out of their mouths, unlike all others that roll out.

Another creature that the rains brought out was this little turtle. We think he is a White-lipped mud turtle, which makes sense because right now we have a lot of mud around here. Kelley picked him up for a picture and when she set him down he scurried away pretty quickly (for a turtle anyway).

All the animals seem to be getting a lot more active around here. We are seeing a bunch of wood rails, toucans, and other colorful birds and we even had a big green iguana ( about 30″) stop and sit up on a log by the garage.

Every morning and evening flocks and flocks of parrots fly over the house. You can hear them coming a mile away squawking as they fly by.

Another rare sight was 3 king vultures flying over the house. King vultures are predominantly white with a colorful head of red, yellow, orange, and purple and have a wingspan of up to 7 feet. We have only seen them one other time and that was way up in the hills.

Also, there are a lot of different colorful butterflies around right now. At least a few times a day we are seeing the blue morphos, which are our favorites butterflies with their iridescent blue color.

Hopefully, we will start seeing some bigger animals around here and maybe they will even pose for some pictures.

Now that it’s drying up, there is lots of yard work and projects to get done. First of all, was to get some more veggies in the ground. This time we planted, broccoli, bok choy, lettuce, radishes, and more kale. There will be more types of veggies going in as soon as we get more of the garden cleaned up and back in shape.

All the plants and fruit trees have tons of new growth on them. There are currently four big bunches of bananas that will be ready very soon, we have pineapples sitting on the counter and the coffee plants are still producing like crazy. This next season the garden should supply us with a lot of fruits and veggies.

Besides all the fruits and veggies we have growing around here, we also have some nice flowering plants. Most of them usually have colorful flowers year-round. Which means we can usually put together a nice arrangement just about any time.

Next on the list is to get our little jungle home looking like Christmas. Lights on the house, a new bigger Christmas tree this year, and of course the monkeys were helping to hang the garland again.

Then it was time to freshen up the casita and get ready for our first guest since February. A little bit of new paint, a new table for the porch, and a smart tv that has a flash drive loaded with a bunch of different tv shows, so no more dvd player to mess with. Darren will be here soon for 10 days, and then Ron & Rhonda will be here over Christmas and New Years. It will be great to have friends coming back down once again. If you are up for a visit, just let us know and we will put you on the calendar. We look forward to seeing you soon.