It was a busy garden weekend here at Black Dog Farm. We started with a trip to Molbaks to take advantage of their 30% off bare-root and b&b trees and shrubs.

We started with something to go in front of the three cedars. The early white blooms of this magnolia shrub will lighten up the dark corner.

balled and burlapped magnolia ready to go in

Digging the hole for the magnolia was little nerve wracking. There are irrigation pipes everywhere. This one isn’t actually split – though all that water running into the hole made us nervous for a couple of minutes.

it's not what it looks like

We added two other shrubs to the front bed. Spireas have nice little white flowers early in the spring and the bright green foliage will make a nice backdrop for more colorful flowers in the summer.

bare root spirea

spireas in front of the oak-leaved ashes

It was hard sticking to the bare-root section at the nursery. I did pretty well, but I just had to have these lenten rose for the library window.

nice lenten rose

lenten roses blooming and iris starting grown

The last plant we bought (and we had to go back for it with the trailer) was replacement for the Korean Dogwood that froze out 2 years ago. Redbuds are a lot hardier. Jim liked the shape of this contorted weeper.

weeping redbud for the end of the rock wall

fat red buds!

We’re still playing catch up with rehabilitating the trees that were improperly planted 6 years ago. So far we’ve had two die. This cedar is doing okay but look at those roots, aren’t roots supposed to grown down?

roots are supposed to grown down not out

The Black Dog Ivan. What can I say…

ivan was supervising

Things are starting to get going. This fat old peony is sending up it’s shoots. They’re so red! They’re also brittle.

fat roots, little shoots

Last October I fell for one of those mixed bags of spring bulbs. In this case reticulated iris and some unnamed species tulip. There were 25 or 30 bulbs (I think) I’ve seen three irises and 2 tulips. Bloody deer. Chewed them all off. I’ve never had much faith in deer repellents but I’m desperate enough to start throwing away money ;-)

a bit faded now

purple!

I also did some early trimming in the herb garden. The rosemary may have survived the winter. I can’t tell yet. One of the things I cleaned out was the washtub that holds the clothes line post and the mint. Hundreds of tiny mint plants.

tiny mint plants

Also coming up are the lilies. Time to put out slug bait.

starting to appear - lilies

amazing that this will be 4 feet tall by august.

I’m hoping for another dry weekend, there’s a lot of planting to do!

Last fall we dug up and divided a lot of overgrown plants. Among them a patch of iris so thick that it took a tree saw to hack it apart.

just starting to grow.

All eight sections have begun to grown nicely. I’m not sure how much bloom we’ll get this year. They’re going to look great at the back of the garage and library beds.

I’ve been working on updates and upgrades and all around tidying to the web sties.

It is unsettling to know that of all the information provided on all my sites and blogs. The thing people most want to know about and to look at are:

the chicken pictures…

sigh.

Most of the day was spent in San Bartolo Coyotepec.

Our first stop was at the workshop of the family of potter Dona Rosa. The Dona Rosa invented the burnishing technique that produces the glossy black pottery that the village has become known for. Her son don Valente continues the tradition.

Here are three pots that sit outside of the door of my room here at the Casa.

examples of black pottery

Don Valente is in his 80s. He still works everyday. The potters here work without a wheel as we think of it. Instead they use two dishes shaped like saucers. One placed upside down on the floor and the second placed right side up on top of it. The pot is then shaped by hand by turning slowly.

setting the pot on the saucer

creating a pot is a multi-day process. The first day the pot body is made, then after drying a couple of days the neck is added.

forming the neck

Another round of drying and the decoration (if any) is added. This is incising using shaped tools. Pots can also have bits stuck on to create an applique like effect. Cutting away parts of the pot to create lacework is also common. (See the above picture of pots in the Casa.)

incising 'grecas'

The unique thing about the black pottery created in San Bortolo is the glossy finish. The finish is created by taking a dry, unfired pot, making the surface a bit damp and rubbing it with a piece of smooth quartz. Then firing the piece for 10 hours. The finished piece is beautiful but fragile and porous. We’ve never had much luck trying to get pieces home without them breaking.

burnishing the pot

The result is the glossy surface on the lattice work on this pot.

lattice work black pot

originally the clay at San Bartolo was used to make functional vessels. These are fired for 13 or 14 hours and the pots are matte dark grey. These pots are waterproof and durable. They also make a pleasant ringing sound when tapped. Don Valente has a set that he plays a tune on at the end of his demonstration.

fired for 13 or 14 hours

The two pictures above were taken at the folk art museum near the zoloco in San Bartolo. The building is another example of the fine modern architecture that being done in Mexico.

folk art museum

Fireworks are a big deal and common at all sorts of fiestas here. One of the kind of freaky and cool things that they do is take fireworks into the crowds. The car in this picture is a ‘mule’ that is loaded with fireworks that spark and spin. Bulls and horses are also common shapes but anything is fair game.

car structure used to support fireworks

At the folk art museum we made two excellent discoveries.

Miguel Ramirez, who is up in the Xochimilco neighborhood of the city. I’ve seen his work before but haven’t had a name to put to it. Next time I’m here I’m have a better chance of finding his workshop.

tin art

The other discovery is entirely new to me. Adolfo Alquisiris Guerrero. He’s a welder who works at the Pemex plant in Salina Cruz. Be makes things – mostly animals out of recycled parts. I’ll try to set up a chance to see and buy some of his work the next time we come done.

stork?

rooster

Jim liked this picture a lot. He mumbled something about grumpy kitties. I chose to ignore him.

bring it, cupcake

Today is the Halloween for most of you all. Here in Mexico it is the day before Muertos. There’s lots of getting ready and cleaning and arranging going on.

We were out and about doing tourista things this morning. Our destination was Teotitlan de Valle, home to the most famous of the Zapotec weavers.

We started in the show room of a family that has long ties back to Jane’s family in the San Joaquin valley. This is pretty typical for a weaver’s show room.

rug show room

Our second stop was at Isaac Vasquez Garcia’s. He is the best known of the weavers outside of Mexico.
The loom are handmade and according to my friend Demetrio last about 20 years under hard use.

a loom at isaac's

Issac demonstrated all of the steps int he process of making a Zapotec rug. here he is holding a bowl of grana. Grana is the dried form of the cochineal bug that is used to produce the red dyes.

isaac with a bowl of grana

Much of Isaac Vasquerz’s work is figurative rather than patterned. Here is shows us how he works a design in small sections across the loom.

isaac weaving a design

Every year I go into Teotitlan chanting “I don’t need another rug. I don’t need another rug.” Um, yeah, right, like that works. This lovely gold deer is coming home with us.

isaac holding the deer rug

After the weaving demo but before lunch we went to see Vivian and her daughter-in-laws make candles. These giant beeswax candles are decorated with flowers, fruits, birds, and angels, all made out of sheets of beeswax. traditionally these candles are used in betrothal ceremonies. The groom’s family takes the candles, bread, and fruit to the house of the bride’s family. The party starts at 6AM and lasts all day.

vivian and jane with a candle

For lunch we returned to Isaac Vasquez’s house to eat tamales. We arrived as another group was finishing watching the demo. Lunch time means that the households sons were around. Picking oranges from the trees in the courtyard is a good way to impress the girls.

orange tree

Before heading back in to town via the scenic route we stopped to walk through the cemetery near the church. Families have been spending the last day or two decorating the graves in preparation for the vigils.

graves in the cemetery in teotitlan

Now it’s 7:30 (or so) in the evening on Oct 31st. In a little while we’ll go to visit friends, to eat a little and have a drink. Then back to the house to nap until 1:30 AM when we’ll leave for Atzompa and all night vigil in the cemetery there. There will be another vigil on the night of the 1st/2nd in the cemetery here in the city.

This is the altar that we (all) have built here in the Casa in honor of Thorny Robison and all of the others that we miss.

altar at casa Colonial

Today is Friday, we must be headed for Mitla and ‘the tree’!. Our first stop is in Santa Maria del Tule, to see a huge, several thousand year old tree. In the center of the town. Pretty amazing. The redwoods are taller, but this honker is huge at the trunk!

arbol de tule at santa maria de tule

Playing ‘name that creature’ is an old game here. Supposedly this is a lion head.

gnarled bole on the trunk

stats on the tule tree

Translated roughly the interesting bits are:

Common Name: Ahuehuete

Age: more than 2000 years.

Height: 42 meters

Diameter: 14.05 meters

Volume: 816,829 cuibic meters

Weight: 636,107 tons

This is a much younger version of the same tree.

a not as big tule tree

Around here, your admission ticket doesn’t not include privileges to “Los banos”, gotta get a separate ticket for that. When you hand over your 2 pesos, you get a ticket and toilet paper! (TP not pictured)

two tickets

There’s some bizarre topiary in the garden in St. Maria, here’s a squirrel with a nut!

squirrel!

two cats? try to catch a bird?

On the hillside across the valley, they are mining lime. Looks too symmetrical and planned to be a mine to me. (Says Jim)

mining

Civilization around these parts is so old, you can pull over on the side of the road and look at petroglyphs that are thousands of years old without ever getting out of the car.

petroglyph by the highway

And here we are at Mitla, one of my favorite Oaxacan archeological sites. The setting is beautiful, the designs wonderful, and it’s a bit more to human scale than Monte Alban is.

northern building complex

White boards?! Why would we need a white board? We got a perfectly good piece of dirt and a twig right here! (Nicolas Garcia, our guide and all around helluva nice guy!)

Nico explaining the time line.

I love the fact that ancient stonework exists side-by-side with modern technology in this part of the world!

skyline at mitla

There are just a few bits of the original decoration still visible. These drawings were done in cochineal on stucco.

remnant of the original painting

The view between two of the buildings, looking across the valley.

scenic view

This is the large building in the southern portion of the complex.

large court yard

I love the designs here. This section of the wall shows six different designs.

multiple friezes

The unrestored portions of the compound show how rough the material is. A lot of the stone was taken to build the church.

unrestored portion of the south compound

Each frieze design is made up of thousands of small stones cut on the face and placed into a bed of mud or cement.

pieces making up the design

They are doing some archeology here, a pair of disembodied arms measures the stones.

measuring each stone

A frieze with a very cool lightning design in it.

lightning

And the local vendors still use the old designs

vendors at mitla

Lara and Jim

To day it was south and a little west of town to the Zaachila valley. Traffic has been terrible this week so our guide Nico took us down a super-secret short-cut. Like going down the rabbit hole.

tunnel of reeds on a dirt road

Speaking of rabbits. Our first stop was the wood carving village of Arrozola. Arsenio Moreles took a machete to a block of wood and created one of his signature long eared rabbits.

carving a rabbit

This is the view of the back yard (and studio) of one of the other carvers. I have really bad studio envy.

valley view from arrozola

I haven’t been to Arrozola in about 5 years. The town looks much the same but the quality and variety of work being offered has gone way up. This peacock is one example.

peacock

All the way down this main street you can walk into the front room of any house and find carvings for sale.

looking down the main street in arrozola

At one house where I bought a lot of little things like earrings and hair sticks, this little parrot followed us around while we shopped. If you look closely you can see that he follows the painters around too. That’s a lovely shade of blue on his tail.

parrot that followed us around

After Arrozola we went to Cuilapam de Guerroro. Their market day is Thursday. We walked through the animal market. They don’t get a lot of gringo tourists walking through the animal market.

Most land in this valley is worked with oxen.

field oxen

Goats, with little bundles of alfalfa tied to the panels.

goats in pens

All of the pigs are this pale pink pricked ear type.

a litter of pigs

Turkey is native to Mexico and the favored meat for fiestas. All of these will end up under a mole this weekend.

turkeys for dinner

This is looking over the town from the site of the large – abandoned Dominican church.

down the hill into the village

The Dominican church in Cuilapam was one of several being built in the Oaxaca area in the middle of the 16th century. There were more churches being built than there was money to build with. This one was abandoned in favor of the cathedral in Oaxaca city.

unfinished church

The chapel as been partially restored. It never had a roof. The indigenous people could not fathom the idea that you would go -inside- to pray to your god. The Dominicans met them half way. In a church but without a roof.

outdoor chapel

Today’s arty shot is of the tower of the chapel and the clear blue sky.

tower on the domincan church

No one can say how many of the Zapotec Indians were baptized in this font. Something between thousands and hundreds of thousands. The angels faces were clearly carved by locals rather than Europeans.

baptismal font

One last look at the valley before heading back into town for lunch.

zaachila valley

Lunch at La Biznaga (barrel cactus). Most places have a fixed price lunch special called the Comida Corrida. Running lunch. Today it was porkchops and apple sauce.

porkchops and apple sauce

La Biznaga has one of the great bars in Oaxaca. There are so many votaries in this city. It’s nice to have one devoted to the agave plant.

the bar at la biznaga

Today began with a trip to the Abastos market, near the south edge of the central district of oaxaca. Today was the opening of the special ‘Muertos’ section of the market, full of special flowers, candles, trinkets and food for the “dia de los muertos” celebrations. We bought flowers, candles, little skeleton figurines, copal incense, and incense burner, and some sugar cane. Here, Lara buys some marigolds

Lara, buying flowers in Abastos market

On the way there, we found elvis!

Elvis lives!

and on the way back, we found a sign which if directly translated to english, results in a hilarious, if off-colour phrase (grupo=group, tornillo=screw)

this is why direct translation is bad

This the blank carving we picked

and chose black and red for this one, kind of in the style of this one

We picked a color scheme like this item

afterwards, Jim found a little ‘Oso’ that he had to take home, too. Before we left, we made sure to get a picture with the artist and one of his recent works!

Lara, Jacobo with one of his works, Jim

After such a strenuous shopping experience, we went to Jacobo and Maria’s restuarant and had a great comida. Then back to town, drop of some laundry, then back to the casa for seista!

Today, the ‘tour’ was scheduled to go up to Monte Alban, a pre-columbian archeological site just west of Oaxaca. My lovely bride has seen it once, that was enough for her, so the tour departed slightly down on troop strength.

Common Blossoming tree on Monte Alban

It was a beautiful day, some cloud cover so it didn’t get too hot, but enough blue sky to make it interesting. These trees are all over Monte Alban, and the story is that they are the genesis of the name that the spainiards gave to the place (monte alban- white mountain). This one is near the visitors center and museum.

part of our tour group discusses the site

This was one of our first stops, at an excavated residence, complete with burial tombs. We had a pretty long and involved discussion here of the societal forces and reflections around having all you ancestors buried in your backyard, for all intents and purposes. This was not a mobile society, obviously. No one wants someone else’s relatives buried in the back yard, after all!

The view of the northern portion of the top of the mountain

Looking south across the northermost section of the Monte Alban site From here we hiked south, kind of around the nw corner of the excavations on the hilltop, leading us to this:

Looking south across the northermost section of the Monte Alban site

This is the area just to the north of the main plaza, the rounded lump you see centered in the picture is the un-excavated top of the southern edifice on the site. From here we move south, up the steps in the middle of the picture, to see this:

The main plaza at Monte Alban

This is the main plaza at Monte Alban, the little black dots you see down there are people, it gives a little idea of the scale. The place is pretty huge! The last time we were here it was winter, and very brown. This is the very end of the rainy season, so everything is nice and green.

This is one of the more symmetrical and complete pyramids among those that have been excavated.

one of the more symmetrical and complete pyramids here

This large construction is in the NW corner of the main plaza.

another large construction at Monte Alban

These columns once stood 12 meters high, and held a roof over this walkway, probably so the chiefs could look down upon all the activity below in shaded comfort.

A walkway, once covered

A sunken area in the main plaza.

A sunken portion of the main plaza

These bas-relief figures are in the SW corner of the plaza. There is much academic discussion over their actual purpose, some say they are medical pictures, some say they depict prisoners, but pretty much everyone agrees they aren’t dancers. it was the first thing that came to someones mind, and it stuck.

Stone carvings known as Los Danzantes

More Dancers

This is the Ball Court, where a ceremonial game reminiscent of soccer and handball was played.

The Ball Court

Day 4 (which was actually yesterday) we went to Ocotlan. Birthplace of the painter Rudolfo Morelos.

But before we got out of town I saw this set of signs and thought you all needed to see them as well.

signs outside a auto parts store

Ocotlan is south of the city of Oaxaca. The biggest building in town is the church. Unlike many colonial era churches in Mexico, the church in Ocotlan has been restored to the way it looked in the 1880s. Much later than the usual 16th century. A lot of buildings in Ocotlan use the same blue, white, ocher, and black color scheme.

Sto Domingo Ocotlan

Inside the church is white, gold, and black. It’s much brighter than many of the churches. This is the main chancel.

main chancel

While we were in the church I could hear a bird singing. It was a tough to locate the source. I was sure it was in the church but couldn’t find it until I realized that there the upper portion of the wall between the main chancel on the rosary chapel was open. I found this little guy perched on an angel’s wing.

finch perched on an angel's wing

The chapel has a collection of obscure saints in the spaces between the vaults.

one of the saints in the ceiling

This is a close up of one of the geometric designs that lines the chapel.

design from the wall of the rosary chapel

it wouldn’t be a church if there wasn’t a shrine to El Nino.

shrine to el nino

Next to the church is the cloister. Which before it was turned into a museum for some of the Morelos collection was the local jail. This is what you would have seen if you were spending your days in the jailhouse courtyard.

the dome of the church as seen from the courtyard

Among the pieces in the museum are these examples of sculpture by the Josefina Aguilar and her family.

This devil sits jauntily on the display case.

little devil

One of Josefina’s sisters makes these hysterical hookers. This one is wearing m0re clothes than most.

made famous by one of the sisters

This is the whole history of the world. Or at least the part that we keep repeating.

the fall of man

The museum also contains a number of Morelos’ paintings but the rooms are too dim to see them decently, let alone photograph the installation.

A couple of blocks from the church – across the Zocolo – is Rudolfo Morelos’ house. This is the view of the gardens at the cnter of the house.

the gardens from above

This walkway leads from the stairs across the top of the porch to Morelos’ studio.

upstairs at the Morelos house

I get studio envy every time I come up here. This long sky-lit room now houses some of his lithographs.

morelos

Dialogo espera.

one of the lithographs

The house is full of little surprises. You can only see this fellow if you turn around and look backwards from the studio door.

sculpture upstairs

There were birds singing in Morelos’ house.

canary in a blue cage

Another fantastical beast.

carousel horse

A little further down the street we went to the home of Josefina Aguilar. She demonstrated how she builds her sculptures.

josefina creating a market woman

She has the most amazing hands. Most of her work is done by feel.

amazing hands

It took her a little over 20 minutes to create this sculpture of a market women carrying calla lilies and marigolds – the traditional day of the dead flowers. I don’t know how the little dog figures into it.

market woman with day of the dead flowers and a puppy

Josefina’s son Demitrio is also a talented painter. I bought this gem from him.

untitled painting by Demitrio Aguilar

Demitrio Aguilar

ObMoto. This mechanic’s shop was right next door to the Aguilar’s.

Jim found this inside. But there was no-one around to ask about it.

partially rebuilt moto

Our last stop for the day was St. Martin Tilcajete. We went to see two families of wood carvers.

Here are two masks carved by Isadora Cruz, one of the old men of wood carving in the valley.

two unfinished masks

Crafts in Oaxaca are family businesses. This is Isadora’s daughter Rosa holding a half finished Dia de Muertos mask.

Rosa

There’s not a lot of straight timber left in the valley.

wood used to make masks

Leaving town we had to give way for this gentleman and his field workers.

a pair of brahma bulls