Some Food And Birds

There are a lot of things going on and to do in the RGV, but without a doubt, food and birds are in the top 5. Yesterday while we were waiting for some large equipment to clear out we ran down to this little place: http://www.stefanosbrooklynpizza.com/ and had some lunch.

Chicken Parmigiana Sub

It was the Chicken Parmigiana Sub and are you kidding me?? Amazing!

But the real kicker around here as far as food is concerned are the tacos. breakfast, lunch, dinner and everything in between. Now for those of you in Colorado and I assume many other places North from here; as a side note, that’s just about everybody in the United States, all but the most Southern part of Florida. When I say tacos you’re probably thinking of something like THIS. But down here when you say taco they are talking about this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taco.

Also, there are really no burritos down here, just wrapped tacos. But the point is, they are EVERYWHERE and inexpensive and good!! So the taco is pretty much the meal that everybody is eating all of the time. Also, they sell them at gas stations – did I mention that?

On the the birds! Saw these fellas this morning and my walk around the property.

South Texas Parrots

Flocks of these fellas fly by all of the time, pretty cool. They’re calls on the other hand, not so cool. Sounds like somebody is being tortured, yeah, that bad. But South Texas is like the International highway for bird migration. We have just about every cool bird you could think of. Come on down and check it out!

The Breeze Was On Our Side Today

Our Contractor, “Barazza Construction ” do change with the breeze when needed. They determined that it would take too long to get the brush burn completed and decided to haul the debris to the land fill. Today is the first day, the temperature is in the 90’s, and the direction of the wind was in full compliance of what we (Gar and I) needed.

For most dirt moving, burning and tree removal days the wind blew the dust and dirt north, in the direction of our camper and home office. But not today! Today the wind is blowing south … and a little to the east or west, but mostly south.

Here are some photos of some carnage being scraped, lifted and moved into the trailer to be hauled of the the landfill.

As some of the locals say… “Thank you Jesus”.

I say “Thank you Barraza Construction”! Making progress helps me feel real good!

You dirty rotten Yellow-bellied Sapsucker

Yeah, not sure how that one has stuck in my brain after all of these years, probably the same way just about everything else seems to I guess. I think I originally heard it on the TV at one point, or the movies, and it stuck. One character or another called somebody else that, I thought it sounded cool and started using it myself.

But, like so many other things, it’s totally tangential to what made me think of it. Why I thought of it was because of these guys and gals here.

Black-bellied whistling ducks

They are Black-bellied whistling ducks! See the connection? Not much of one right? My mind at work.

These ducks are pretty darn interesting for a number of reasons, not the least of because they don’t quack – ever. They don’t really whistle either to be honest, more like a peep. I guess calling them the Black-bellied peeping duck was out of the question so whistling is what they landed on.

They are pretty cool though. They land in trees as well and actually do have a nice sound to them. They are here to greet us every morning now. Not a bad way to start the day!

 

 

While we were out having fun

While we were out having fun at the Onion Blossom Festival our contractors were hard at work back on the property moving quickly on the next phase, the “shed”. Check it out. This is where we were after one day.

16 x 32 shed

And here we are after the second day of work.

Building a shed

This shed will make life MUCH easier for Viv and I. It will allow us to get our “stuff” out of storage and on to the property to where we can finally have access to it. Having access will allow us to start really getting things organized and moving along.

Why oh why?

We are a mid aged husband and wife who found ourselves being pretty “comfortable” and even happy with our lives, so why change? We both have this drive to be more than ourselves, to do bigger things than ourselves 16 x 32 shedand to have a positive impact on more than ourselves. On this blog you will find the chronicle of our attempt to do all of that and make a living in the process.

This blog was created for multiple purposes, to document our journey, to keep our friends and family up to date, but more than anything else, to INSPIRE!! Through our journey we hope to inspire you to find your dream and build it into reality! We live just once, what are you going to do with that opportunity?

So much to talk about

Wow, I’m not even sure what to think anymore. It feels like we have been here so long . . . but then not long at all. Very confusing.

We had our first crack at burning away the vegetation today, firefighters on hand and all of that.

Fire fighting Harlingen

It was going pretty well initially, but then the wind kicked up and we weren’t really able to burn as much as we wanted (all of it). There ended up being a small brush fire down the street (not caused by us) and a truck had to come help them out. So while they were leaving that fire, they stopped by to ask if we wanted some help putting ours out. Yes, please.

Fire truck

Fire Fighters

The REAL good news is that we FINALLY got approved for our shed! I know, how hard to get a shed approved right? Well down here they have become very particular about such things. It seems there is a bit of a history of people just building “sheds” and then living in them. The weather is so nice here I could really see that being an issue, so they have really tightened up the permit process etc.

Shed starts

It’s very important for us to get the shed done because just about everything we have is in storage . . . a monthly bill with just a monthly RIO (ROI being a place to have our things) tied to it. Building the shed gives us something that as storage will have a full pay off in a little over three years . . .and we’ll get a whole lot more use out of it to boot! Also, it allows us to have our property on site and on shelves! Boxes are collapsing in the paid storage because of the humidity. We hope to be able to get out of the storage place in April.

I was just looking through pictures, have you guys seen this one yet?

Pirate ship

That was on the way back from South Parde – such a cool place to live!