Thunder Showers

Tessa is outside planting pumpkin seeds in the pouring rain that has been away for a couple weeks.  The rains start out light and increase to heavy in minutes with loud tapping on metal roofs, tree splitting thunder and lightening exploding in the backdrop, and often lighting up the house.  They remind me of the thundershowers we had growing up in The Livable Forest of Kingwood, Texas.  I remember making boats out of old popsicle pushup containers and nut shells and floating them down the street gutters with obstacle courses to sink the ships.  Of course there were little frog passengers sailing steadily downstream, hopping out along the way.  I think they must have been some of my first companions in life other than my family.

Today we woke up around 6:45 a.m., realizing it was too early to get up in the country, no matter how much work is on our plate.  We went back to sleep for an hour before heading off to the composting toilet guru's place a few minutes down the road.  Gary was a very friendly biologist who has a passion for green living, being in the composting toilet business over 20 years, and using them for 35.  His house is intriguing in that he designed it as an inside out lifestyle house, meaning you walk under walkways between spaces.  The place was modern with many engineering contraptions for opening sliding windows and doors bringing nature into any part of the house.  The bathroom was made of a concrete floor with pebbles, and the tub was made from hebel block, a lightweight blown concrete, easy to carve and sculpt.

Later that day we headed out to Suze and Klim's to pick up a water heater and take a dip in the creek. They have a pear tree full of fruit, although the fruit bats are enormous out here and will devour anything if you let it ripen.  It really looks like Gothem City at dusk when they are all flapping just overhead sillouetted by a gray blue sky.  In college, the sky would swarm black when the bats left the congress bridge every night, creating a sound only millions of flying bats can make.  The bats here seem more vampiresque due to their large bodies and random movements so nearby.  Today we saw black skink-like creature that had a body the size of a forearm just off the side of the road.  The birds are bright reds, with blue and black stripes, as well as 16-20" white cocktails with yellow head feathers.  The rain is now coming down in sheets, filling the water tanks and the creek quickly.  Many of the houses are built on stilts as is this one due to the tropical flooding potential at the end of the summer.

Fruit stand in Mullum

 Pebble green floor

 Klim and Suze's

The new rack on Linus the "LoAce" down below Suze and Klim's just above the creek.

A popular intersection.  On the right is Santos the organic market.  You can pay up to $50 for a Kilo of goji's...this is why growing your own food, and hitting the farmer's markets and buying no spray produce helps out.