Today is Jult 27 and these new butterflies showed up in mass this morning.  It was about a month ago that yellow and purples showed up.  I don't know enough about them to know what it is, so I asked in a FB group if this is a Monarch.  It is not.  Monarchs start their migration from central Mexico and go north to the United States as far as North Califonia.  This beautiful fella is actually a moth.  But beautiful nevertheless. I discovered a month ago, with my rock side walk, if I keep it sprayed with water, it form little pools of water everywhere, and the butterflies and moths come in and gather around it for a drink.  I've also been told this is why they have "stopped over" on their journey here, because I have abundant supplies of water and there is no other spot for 3 km away.    These Adelpha also love to feast on spoiled fruit.  I accidentally left a banana outside that I forgot about and it was completely black and completely covered in the beautiful creatur

  I have been working now for over a year on the first part of development of my ranch into a community of 5 or 6 families who desire to live a peaceful, sustainable, and off-grid lifestyle, with pueblo life, in Yucatan Mexico. Now I am ready, and starting, to extend the road back to serve 4 additional tracts of land from 12.5 hectares to 26 hectares for interested buyers.   First we excavated out the largest rocks and leveled them.  Then we smooth some dirt over the surface to make it more level.  That is what we have done in the this video.  We are about 1/2 back now to the densest trees.  In a month we will bring in gravel and cover this dirt to make the road all weather.

  I love learning new things.  But sometimes learning a new thing, just means you find out that the old thing you thought you knew was wrong.    We've been working, off and on, on a new bodega (storeroom or garage) so I can have a place to put my tractor in out of the rain.   Things kept coming up that would demand attention.  But now we're back at it and needing about 600 more palm leaves to finish the roof.   The leaves that are on it now, I bought for about 7 pesos each (30 cents US).   And I guess I've got about 15,000 pesos spent so far and need to spend 6,000 more.   I was telling Salvador to get them ordered, and looked over at a palm on my land and asked him could we use those leaves.  He said certainly. Now my first thought was "why didn't you tell me this before I spent 15,000 pesos.  But then I realize, he didn't tell me because I just told him to buy some and that's what he did.  He gives his opinion when I ask for it. The long and short is I

Isaiah 61:3 says:  I will appoint unto them, that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, and the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for heaviness, that they might be called trees of righteousness.   For many years, I have always made it a habit to try and consider in my decisions, the "unintended consequences" that can sometime come from even the best choices.   This is a video of my taking some of the plants and cutting them into smaller pieces to try and multiply the plants from 2 to 12 plants . I shared some months back about giving my co-workers instructions to clear out a fence row on both sides of a rock wall.   And they did exactly what I asked the to do.  However, a few days later I took a walk down the rock wall, and discovered, to my sorrow, a large pile of mature aloe vera plants that they had either cut up into pieces, or pull up from the ground and attempted to burn.  My heart sank.  I certainly wasn't mad at the guys.  They did just w

  I have mentioned before that the Maya like to make things happy.  They respect nature.   Previously, I've written that I was going to through out some old tortillas and one of my helpers pulled them out of the trash and asked if he could tear them into pieces for the birds.  I said "of course".  And then he told me that the tortillas would make the birds happy, and when the birds are happy they sing, and when the sing, the trees are happy and the land is happy, and when the land is happy it is a happy place to work. What a lesson. So I'm planting 5 hanging baskets this morning, Monday July 17, 2023, of Albahaca seeds.  I'm putting about 10 seeds per basket and the package says they should come up in 21 days.  We'll see. I've planted these before because I wanted to have my house surrounded by a pleasant fragrance.  And I learned a lesson.  When they came up, I separated them, and planted each separate plant in a flower bed.   I goofed.  Separated they di