Global warming is really real. The yankees who live next door to us from

November to May, arrived in July. I think they figured out it was hotter in Michigan than N. Florida during that heat wave, or maybe they didn't have air conditioning up there. Anyway, we bought the house my father built in 1936. He was a fisherman. Not a good living. It was the depression. You can imagine it is not a fabulous estate. He built it himself. Did the plumbing,wiring,dug the well, all that. Anyway these yankees are the stupid kind who do not have a sense of humor. Must be repuglicans. In the south, brilliant people might work at a menial job. They might be hilarious, and kind. So you tend to give people the benefit of the doubt till they prove themselves to be stupid. Anywho,it is an old neighborhood on a bayou. Some old people in old houses, some $320k new McMansions built 10 feet from the property line. Some ratty old trailers with mold dripping down the sides. The yankees live in one of those during the winter, 5 feet from our fence. I have chickens, I collect rainwater off the roof, so the house is surrounded by buckets and assorted claptrap. We don't believe in mowing lawns, so I have an english cottage garden out front, with lots of native (scraggly) butterfly host plants, and nectar plants. Bird feeders. I recycle everything. I dumped a ton of shredded confidential paper from my workplace in the sandy areas, to feed the worms and add organic matter to the soil. Grass/flowers are overtaking those areas as the humic stuff attracts them. We are letting the back 1/2 acre go back to forest. We don't plant anything that is not xeriscape-worthy, except 3 big garden spots that are watered with rainwater off the roof. I go outside in my nightgown in the morning while our 10-grain cereal is cooking and feed my chickens. I am not fond of neighbors peering out windows at me and scowling at me across the fence. And I don't want to get dressed up to do some things. We do not fumigate. We have no roaches. We have skinks and lizards and chickens outside to eat the bugs. Every November we get big rats in the house and have to go through horrible shenanigans getting them all kilt. This year in July, the yankees arrived and we got rats! I think they fumigate for roaches when they arrive and the rats have been running over to our house. Rats in July! Yankees in July! Global warming is real! I don't call nice, smart, or funny people from up north "yankees". That is a derogatory term for stupid people who are from up north. "rednecks" are stupid people from down here. Sorry, that is the way I feel. I even like a lot of rednecks, just not the really stupid,mean ones. Flame away.

which is northwest, near the border with Costa Rica, on the Caribbean.
It was cooler there than it is here in NC. Closer to the equator in summer--cooler?

Global warming is real.

my spanish is poor and i thought it hot during my trip in summer but i was told it was "winter"!

it is because they have more afternoon thundershowers to clear the air at that time of year i think

haven't been to bocas del toro tho, i'm thinking of the canal zone

i love panama and envy you your trip, wish i could pack my bags and move there today!

Panama is in North America.

my deepest sympathies. and f888 'em if they can't take a joke. if they don't understand your serious commitment to the ecology of Mother Earth and Her cycles, they can just move back up north.

I have two bins of red wigglers myself (kitchen scraps and coffee grounds and smushed oak leaves). Good for you. Wish I could help with the rats. And the yankees.

Felix and Oscarina live very well in Yuma, Az in a kiddy pool which is cleaned daily. They get their exercise swimming in the big cement pond. Wish I could ship them down to you. Oscarina has doubled in size in the past year and is rapidly growing out of her present habitat.

a lot of company. I walk on the trail to a wild pond with old tree trunks above the water here and there, and in the spring when the water and air are still cold but the sun is warm, the sliders array themselves along the trunks like dinner plates up a waitress's arm, all different sizes, heads up in the air, catching the rays.

How did an Arizona household acquire red-eared sliders? (please excuse my Iowa assumption that Arizona must be ALL DESERT ALL THE TIME -- too many issues of Arizona Highways as a kid, I guess.)

in the beholder's eye. Your yard sounds like my kind of beauty. These manicured yards and lawns with the picture perfect "beauty", are not my idea of beauty, quite the opposite, to me they're ugly. In fact, I often think that the people that live in those houses and yards are sometimes lying to themselves, and to everyone else, by essentially saying "look at my perfect yard and house," in the hopes other people believe they're perfect people because of the facade on their property.

When we moved into our current house, there was a sanford and sons house across the street. We bought the house anyway, partly because of that neighbor, to me, his yard was "beautiful". Since then, authorities have come around and made him clean up his yard. The street is now that much uglier.

Seriously.