Spring Concert at el Charco

Music in outdoor settings is always so wonderful.  I think back to the Hollywood Bowl, the Pageant of the Masters, summer concerts at the UofM and the concerts at Mt. Tam.  These were always wonderful events with great music, great weather and wonderful environments.  Well now I have to add another location to this listing of great venues, that being the canyon in el Charco del Ingenio jardín botánico.

Last week the jardín botánico sponsored an outdoor concert of four saxophone musicians and the music, the setting and the ambiance were outstanding.  The group played a variety of music from baroque to jazz and we thoroughly enjoyed it.

Here are some of my photos from the concert.

If you would like to check out more of my photos from the concert please click here.

Dia de Festiva en Rancho Viejo

The past weekend the local pueblo near our rancho had a weekend festival.  These are major events for the community and typically everyone in the community participates.  The pueblo of Rancho Viejo has two of these festivals each year, one in March and one in May.  The festival in March commenced on Friday which is fairly typical of these celebrations.  This festival included fireworks that ran from 6p on Friday until around midnight and then started again on Saturday morning and did not seem to stop until the festival was over on Sunday afternoon.

These festivals include the usual carnival rides and lots and lots of snacks, foods and drinks. 

Here is a couple of niños enjoying one of the rides.

 These festivals always seem to be about family and the children always have a great time. 

We did not actually venture over to the festival until Sunday, which was the day for the blessing of the horses and the charreada demonstration.

For the blessing the pueblo delgato leads all of the horses to be blessed into the chapel of the principal church in Rancho Viejo.

Upon the return from the chapel, the charreada demonstration commences.  The local cowboys demonstrate some basic horse handling and maneuvers.

Then the final phase of the demonstration is the riding of the bulls by some of the young men from the pueblo.  Here are three of the "lucky" young men who were selected for the ride.

But then here is one of the bulls that they will get to ride.

To say the least the bulls had the better time of the ride than the young men.  However it was a wonderful day out enjoying the festival, the wonderful people of Rancho Viejo and the environment in general.

el Charco del Ingenio jardín botánico

One of the jewels of San Miguel is the botanical garden in the hills over the city.  It is a place that I enjoy to visit although I don't get there enough.  In the past two months, I have been to three lectures/tours of the jardín and every time I see something new or unusual.

The past week we had a lecture on using cacti and succulents in your garden design with an add on topic of how to propagate cacti and succulents.  The lecture and tour was given by the curator of the cactus collection Martin Smith.

Other than to recommend that if you enjoy native plants and trees, cacti and succulents, you need to go and visit the jardín now as spring is hitting the desert plants and everything looks so wonderful.  Instead of my expanding on what I saw, I am only going to post a number of photos from my last trip there.  If you want to see more of my collection of images from el Charco, visit my flickr collections here and here.

Walking Around San Miguel

At least once a week I try to escape from the work around the rancho to head into San Miguel with my camera.  Having lived in many large and smaller cities, I am always amazed at the activity and congregating that occurs in San Miguel.  In Los Angeles you are always in your car and you can never just stumble upon some gathering.  In Chicago, we walked everywhere but the city is so large that at the end of the day we would hear about some great concert or street festival, but we never were even close to being there.  In San Francisco we lived across the bay on the west side of Marin County and it was a long drive (not distance, just time) to get into the city.  Then of course in Mendocino and Northern Minnesota the locations were so small and thinly populated that there never seemed to be anything going on.

But that is sure not the case in this town.  A lot of times I will come with camera in hand and just walk about the centro part of town and shoot tourists, vendors, or anything else that captures my eye.  Then there are days that I will walk up to the main jardín outside the Parroquia and be surprised at the activity going on.

Two weeks ago I was walking up Aldama to the centro jardín and I spied this man totally focused on his painting.

Upon arriving at the jardín, I found out that there was a food festival

and a rock concert by some of the young students in town.

Then walking back down to my car with all my groceries I shot a couple of other photos of people just getting around town.

Here is a vendor selling some food products

a lady walking her dog

these girls heading out after school to play some fütball

and this man also walking home after his daily shopping trip.

However, there is so much going on at our rancho and so much going on in town that I sometimes miss really good festivals and events.  This happened to me yesterday when one of my friends, Jennifer, sent me a great photo of this man in costume and head dress for the celebration of El Señor de la Conquista, that she took on Friday.  Oh boy did I miss a great photo op but it will be here again next year and there will probably a good photo op tomorrow, such is life in San Miguel.

If you like Botanical Gardens and Photos

One web site that I visit often is the Botany Photo of the Day which is written by UBC Botanical Garden and Centre for Plant Research, a department of the Faculty of Land and Food Systems at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. This site has a daily selection of plants and trees that I always find interesting.

Well last week I submitted one of my photos to their flickr group and this week it was selected as the photo of the day on their web site. So I recommend that you add this to your rss reader so you can follow what they are posting. You can also see my photo by clicking here.