Confessions of a Lazy Blogger

Yes, you are all correct, I have turned into a slug…I found that going to the beach, sitting in the park or doing anything else besides updating my blog was necessary for my sanity. I have missed you my little blog buddies, we have spent hours together with pictures and thoughts on our life here in Ecuador…I have been a lazy blogger and promise that I will turn a new leaf and post at least once a week so that I can have a journal of our fun and so you all can see our lifestyle.

Here is one of my pepper plants that has produced very hot peppers like clockwork for the past two months, I was given these as a gift and have three like this and one that is an elongated pepper. Joe loves them sliced and put in vinegar and uses them every chance he gets on anything, or should I say everything, from eggs to steak.

We have found this year to be totally different as to the climate from last year. It started to rain back in January, it would rain from 4 am to 5 am. That lasted for a few weeks, then the rain lasted longer and was much heavier causing our driveway and car park area to look like a small pool. This along with the palms and vegetation around our porch has caused us to reconsider any green whatsoever in the home we hope to buy this year. Mosquitoes and flies were incredible. Just incredible. Did I mention incredible?

I know what you are saying – it looks so nice. But under every leaf there was a hidden creepy thing, if not a mosquito then slugs, if not slugs little frogs, yuck!  Not to mention what shows up in the dead of night to feed on it all…..I now understand totally why most of the yards in Salinas, Chipipe and now in Playas are paved, sand or tiled…We found ourselves not able to use our porch for most of the day with flies and mosquitoes constantly in our faces, flying around our food and the worse was thinking of getting dengue from all the mosquitoes. The local paper says that in the first few months this year there are double the cases of dengue from last year – something like 2000 and climbing.

We found these bug zappers in Super Tia for $3.99 and don’t know what we would have done if we didn’t. As you can see we do have his and hers so as not to cause any friction between us on the bug fighting front. They do not so much zap as pop. Kinda cool!!!

When looking on the internet for fly deterrents we found one site that said to fill a clear plastic bag with water add a penny (to keep flies away in the evening) and hang it around the area you wanted to help become a “fly free zone”. We put up six of these beauties on our porch hanging from the doors, the light fixtures and every possible area we could think of. Seems to work to a certain degree. The good thing is the house itself is pretty secure with screens on all the windows and doors so at night we only have a few mosquitoes to attend to before we retire…Joe is on mosquito patrol and does a great job, I think he just likes to hear the zapper pop those little buggers!