i´ve received a few comments on the “rashness” of my announcing publicly that i would be attempting to blog weekly. and now it´s been a month since my last post. it probably was a bit rash. i was hoping it would keep me somewhat more accountable. which, seeing as people have called me out on the lack of posting, it´s worked 
we didn´t visit xitapontla for two weeks. there´s been no water. luckily those two weeks were also over Semana Santa, so there were no kids at the boarding school trying to use the water that did not exist. merideth and i went out last week, but there was still no water. that´s not completely true. there was a guy there from CDI, the organization that helps out indigenous people (translated, that means people who speak a language other than Spanish). this guy was delivering a tinaco (large cistern) full of water-about 17000 liters (or around 5000 gallons) worth. the 50 people in the boarding school use this amount of water in about a month. for comparison, the average amount of water used in the US, per day, per person is 80-100 gallons. using 80 gal/day would mean that ONE person would be using 2400 gal per month. half of a tinaco. (the US Geological Service provided the stat of 80-100 gal/day, per person).
the boarding school uses this 5000 gallons every month to wash dishes, bathe, etc. everything except for drinking. seeing as it took over a month to get this tinaco´s worth in the first place, the maestro was understandably a little hesitant to start planting in the garden. gardens tend to suck up water rather quickly. but he also didn´t want to wait another two months till the rains started in order to being planting in the garden. so he decided that he would haul water as needed.
as a result, today they had water and we were able to transplant the flowers that we had started a number of weeks ago and also direct seed cilantro and radishes. the kids were great. they jumped right in and were very enthusiastic about both the planting and transplanting. once we show them how to do something, they pick it up immediately and are quite willing to take over and do it all themselves. they also obviously come from farming families. they are also getting a little less shy about having their picture taken. it´s nice that they don´t take off running while they´re in the process of planting things. though as soon as they were done with their planting, they resumed their running.
we´re trying an experiment in xitapontla. well…it feels like much of this year is an experiment, seeing as this is the first time we´ve done any of this stuff here. in xitapontla we buried the drip tape for the drip irrigation system. and seeing as we planted things today, we also ran the system. it was working fine when we left, but we´ll see how it´s going next monday when we go back out. in all the other gardens, the drip tape is laying on top of the ground and we´re going to cover it with mulch. merideth´s been having nightmares about the irrigation system since we first started putting it in. she has more experience than i do with drip irrigation (which is easy to do…i have absolutely no experience…well, i should say, i had no experience. now i´ve helped put in 19 irrigation systems). but so far none of the nightmare´s have come to be. gracias a Dios.
this morning we also went to chiaucingo. we visited about half the houses of the group. some of the houses we´ve already put in the drip irrigation system and transplanted, so we checked how their plants were doing. so far everyone´s plants are doing well. the tomato seedlings are the only ones we´re seeing major problems with and unfortunately we don´t know anything about the seeds. they were in the fridge here in the office when we arrived. they supposedly were only a year old and they passed our germination test. but a lot of the plants seem to be rather weak and droopy and some of the leaves are drying up. so we´ll see. both merideth and i are going to send pictures to people we´ve worked with before that may have ideas or know websites that would be helpful. or if anyone knows of any good websites about plant diseases, we´d welcome any tips.
the houses that we have not yet put irrigation systems in and visited today, we tried. but a few people still have not yet finished double digging their beds…it is hard work. and it is quite hot right now. luckily, the plants of these people are also not quite ready to transplant, so they´ve got a little leeway.
i am currently uploading pictures of today´s planting in xitapontla. when they´re done uploading, you can go to this website: http://www.zooomr.com/photos/yoda784 and go to “sets” and they´re under “xitapontla planting.”
