We've been living in Mexico for about five months now (Alex has been retired for about six) and our new relaxed lifestyle is agreeing with us pretty well. Here is a report on how things are going as spring comes to Loreto.

Most of the time that we've been here it has nominally been "winter," and though there was usually plenty of sunshine, our house isn't designed to make use of it -- except in summer -- so there were days that felt a bit chilly. We coped by adding a bit of clothing though. It has been a year since we've used fuel for either heating or cooling (well, except for some air conditioning in the car). There was rain early on and we thought we might see some mosquitoes, but they have been scarce. With the end of March, high temperatures are again in the 80s, and some of our windows have blinds that we try to remember to close before the sun can peek in. On the other hand, we have a lot more shade than we used to. Our gardeners, once they realized that we were here full-time, cranked up the irrigation for the plants in our yard, and now even some of the bougainvilleas, once once difficult to spot, are climbing up toward our second floor terrace and sheltering our living room. Here in Loreto Bay, the bougainvillea is the default solution to most gardening questions.

During the three years since the house was finished, it has always seemed reasonable to hope that the next time that we arrived the yard would be planted and starting to grow. It turns out, though, that in our neighborhood not much will happen, or at least turn out well, unless you yourself are present to supervise. We were offered a big ficus to grow above the seat wall in the corner, and had been sold on the idea of cannas to fill the space behind, and ended up with a smaller ficus and several little banana trees in an awkward spot. Gradually after our arrival the bananas gave way to more bougainvillea, the cannas departed (some to be replaced by purple sage), and finally, with the help of Vivero Santa Anita, the nursery in town, there is now a ficus that is taller than we are and looks like it will continue to grow.

Part of the problem was the tabachin that I had asked to have planted in the arc at the base of our little tiled niche, out of nostalgia for the mimosa that grew in the back yard of our old house in Seattle, and of course from the all-consuming quest for shade. Its presence just complicated things though, and it didn't look like it was going to amount to much. I finally had to admit that we were better off without.

Here inside the walls life for most plants is pretty easy, but in the surrounding hills, desert rules apply; and many plants have to work hard to guard their precious resources. The thorn is a popular tool, often appearing when least expected, sometimes persisting longer than seems just. In the wild most stickers are pretty plain, but in the garden they can be used for decoration. We were surprised to find that we have a little hedge of plants with dark green oval leaves and lavish thorns that actually branch -- twice -- to create a wonderful display of defensiveness. Since the thorns grow opposite each other on the stem, they give the appearance of a single assembly branching three times, providing eight separate conical points reaching out in several directions. Mercifully the thorns, though sharp, are limber at least until they have been around for a while. One of these plants produced a little bright red fruit during the winter, and I have just found the first of this year's blossoms, simple flowers with five narrow white petals maybe an inch and a quarter long. I would be very glad to know what to call these menacing entities.

Of course even for us life isn't all landscaping. We have explored just about all the roads that we can reach from home on our bicycles -- our realm ending only where Highway 1 narrows (almost inconceivably) and heads uphill above Punta Nopoló. For more about our neighborhood, by the way, see our Loreto Bay page.

We have been even further that direction on foot, along the trail that parallels the highway on the west side. And we have finally made our first trips to Tabor Canyon, in the hills opposite Puerto Escondido. And though we haven't yet been very far afloat, our main purpose in life is actually kayaking, so there is a separate blog to chronicle our paddling adventures.

In our "interior" life, we're currently watching, among the meagre cable offerings, a number of American TV series that we didn't have time for back in the States, and which are just showing up here. We have only begun our second season of Mad Men, with the Spanish subtitiles that we might have missed before.