Proving Parkinson’s Law

"Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion". Well, in my semi-retirement, I’ve discovered that it’s not just work - doing very little of anything also easily expands to fill the whole day. In search of Parkinson’s exact words, I applied, as always, to Mr. Google, who lead me, as he frequently does, to Wikipedia, where I discovered some of the corollaries to P’s Law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law). As an inveterate procrastinator, I have obviously been practising some of these all my life.

 
There is still no sign of the beautiful Trogon who was excavating a nest outside our window before Christmas. I did, however, see a raptor (a falcon?) glide through the trees, where I suspect he has been looting and raiding. Maybe he killed the Trogon? The bird population has changed dramatically since the floods four years ago. We have a large band of Oropendolas (I hadn’t realized they have red on their underbelly (for lack of the technical term) in addition to their yellow under-tails). A colony of wood pigeons (Chilean pigeons, I’m told) is moving in, there are always parakeets squawking around and four different raptors – it used to be just a pair of hawks. I fear for our LBJs and thrushes.
 

We’re low on flowers – if heat, lack of watering or excessive rain don’t get them, the ants most certainly will. However, our jungle becomes denser by the day, encouraged by the heat and plenty of rain. I did a tour with our caretaker in the hopes I could persuade him to cut things back a bit. He varies his excuses between ‘it’s too dry/hot to do anything’ and ‘it has been too wet’. That was certainly true this afternoon, when we had another tremendous thunder storm, and thunderous rain with it. We nearly gave up on returning to Rio, but my recently remarried ‘comadre’ (daughter’s godmother) is in town and tonight’s our last chance of seeing her, so we’re braving the elements.