We’ve just about hit the rainy season here in Puerto Rico, so tis the season to plant, plant, plant! All of the trees that we’ve planted over the last few years have finally blown up and our property is looking pretty lush. This season I am focusing on more detailed planting to make it look a bit more finished. Today, I planted a couple of hibiscus hedges, so I figured I would give a little tutorial on how to make a hibiscus hedge because, not only do they look nice, it’s super easy and free!

1. Get your tools together. If you are super lazy all you really need is snips and something to make a small hole in the ground (if your soil is hard). Today I used snips to cut some pieces off a hibiscus plant that was due for a trim, a pick axe to remove the grass where I wanted to plant the hedge and a pry bar to make the holes in the ground to stick my hibiscus clipping in.

2. Trim off some branches from an established hibiscus. Don’t have a hibiscus plant? Offer to trim your neighbors, or go on a midnight hibiscus trimming mission at a local park. When you trim them, cut them at a bit of an angle.

3. Use a pickaxe, shovel or hoe, to make your line for the hedge. I cleared away the grass so that weeding/mowing will be easier while the hedge establishes itself. If you’re lazy, you don’t have to do this part. I’ve made hedges without clearing the grass and they did just fine. This time I am making the hedge a bit curved, so this gives me a bit of a line to follow when planting the clippings.

4. Stick the hibiscus clippings in the ground 6″ – 12″ apart. If your ground is hard, use something to make a little hole. I used a pry bar, but you can also use a piece of rebar and a hammer to make a perfect little hole for hibiscus clippings. When making the holes for the hibiscus clippings, make them at a bit of an angle so the the clippings crisscross each other like an X. When they crisscross like this, it make a perfect, full hedge once the clippings start growing in.

5. Water your new hedge a lot. You want to keep it consistently moist until the clippings develop roots. I water once a day until I can see new green growth, but I live in the tropics where it is pretty moist. You may need to water more often to get hibiscus clippings to take off in a dryer climate.

Here is a hibiscus hedge that I planted last year and it has grown to well over 8ft tall. It normally has lots of red hibiscus flowers, but I just trimmed them all off to make a new hedge:

And there you have it. How to make a hibiscus hedge for free! I prefer “living fences” and hedges are a great way to section off parts of your property as well as giving it a more landscaped feel.

See larger image Black and Decker LHT2436 24-Inch 36-Volt Lithium Ion Cordless High Performance Cordless Hedge Trimmer, Includes 36v Battery (Lawn & Patio) List Price: $149.99 USD New From: $129.00 In Stock

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Our weather in Puerto Rico is awesome. We have two main seasons, wet & dry, and they are both great. The wet season temperatures range from lows of 75 to highs of 100 and the dry season temperatures range from lows of 75 to highs of 90. Luckily, I go to work in board shorts year around.

The Wet Season

The wet season consists of almost daily rain in the afternoons for an hour or two with the occasional full days sprinkle/storm. When we do get rain, it’s usually a pretty amazing show of natures strength. We don’t get many New Jersey-esque all day light rain. When we get it, the flood gates open up, you can feel the thunder shake the house and the lightning shows are awesome.

The Dry Season

The dry season down here cools off considerably after the summer heat and the rains slow down. We still get afternoon showers but the consistency of them slows down and usually by January 1st, afternoon showers are scarce and the land starts to dry up. By March the entire countryside is yellow and dry and only the strongest tree’s keep their leaves. Locals take this opportunity to burn the hillsides to rid themselves of the long yellow grass, dried up choker vines (like Pica Pica and burn down the tree’s that aren’t strong enough to survive the annual droughts. It’s during these dry spells that we need to regularly water all of our plants with city water.

I took this picture using the Panoramic feature on my iPhone. It’s not the best picture but it absolutely illustrates how dry our yard gets towards the end of the dry season. I think this picture was taken in March 2013.

Also, this video of Tres Palmas waves shows extremely yellow grass in the foreground…and a big swell breaking in the background.

Watering our plants with city water is a bummer. First of all, we have to pay for it! And second, it doesn’t seem like city water really helps the plants do anything but survive. Regardless of how much we water, our plants simply survive. We don’t see them flourish. However, as soon as the first rain hits, our entire property changes from yellow grass and wilted leaves (if there are any leaves left at all) to a brilliant green. I’m not a scientist but these two facts force me to the conclusion that water from the sky is better for the plants health and building a homemade rain barrel is better for my wallet.

Building Our DIY Rain Barrel

I was able to build most of this project with things I had around the house (I’m a packrat) leftover from construction. What we didn’t have, we ordered from Amazon via a kit.

This is what I had;

• Plastic 60 Gallon Drum
• 2″ PVC Pipe (same size as downspouts)
• 2″ PVC 45′s
• 2″ PVC Couplings
• 2″ PVC 90
• 2″ to 1 1/2″ PVC Reduce

The key parts we needed that we didn’t have were ordered from Amazon;

• 1/2 inch hole cutting bit
• 1/2 threaded gaskets
• 1/2 spigot
• 1/2 inch drain valve/cap

If you’re looking to buy the same kit Summer and I got, here is a link to the product on Amazon – rain barrel kit

DIY Rain Barrel Was Fast and Easy

When I finally go to constructing the rain barrels, it only took me about 10 minutes from start to finish which included getting my tools and putting them away when I was done. Building a rain barrel at home is super easy and fast.

See larger image EarthMinded RBK-0001 DIY Rain Barrel Kit (Lawn & Patio) List Price: $40.58 USD New From: $28.32 In Stock

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Have you ever rolled around in the pink insalation used to insulate your attic in nothing but your bathing suit? Well, me neither, but I would imagine the itch and irritation that would follow such a ridiculously stupid act would only be about 20% of the death fire itch from hell Pica Pica in Puerto Rico can inflict upon you. I’m not a scientist, so I can’t prove what I am about to write, but I welcome input, contributions, corrections and personal experiences with Pica Pica in the comment section.

Let’s start out with a personal experience of mine to set the tone.

When we bought our property in Rincon, we had no idea the maintenance required to maintain our acreage. Actually, I didn’t consider yard maintenance at all. We were first time home buyers and I simply had my eyes on the prize: Home Ownership

My first summer down here was hot and full of mosquitos, but we had no power for fans at the house and we had tons of standing water all over the place. I focused 90% of my manual labor on the house and 10% on planting a few things close to the house. I didn’t worry about the rest of the property, or the vines strangling out all our junk trees. Well, ultimately that vine, that purportedly grows up to 12 inches a day, was Pica Pica.

Pica Pica vines and pods seemed harmless enough to me all summer. When I did walk through the vines or had to clean out an area with a machete, it never itched me so I wasn’t worried about it. I figured it was another hopped up wives tale like the chupacabra. That winter, after the rains stopped, things changed and I realized I was very wrong.

We started to get an idea what Pica Pica could do once the rains stopped and all the plants dried out. The green Pica Pica pods turned brown and then grey. All the little tiny green hairs were now dry, brittle and as fine as fiberglass. Since our house is situated in a valley, downwind from the trade winds, we get a wonderful breeze through the house everyday. Unfortunately, when there are hundreds of dried up Pica Pica pods upwind of your house, it’s not so wonderful.

Pica Pica hits it’s prime in March every winter. Months and months without rain dry everything out allowing the super light Pica Pica fibers to swirl around with the wind and land EVERYWHERE; in your car, chairs, laundry hanging out to dry, closets, hampers, all over sheets, beds, couches, bathing suits, socks, underwear, shoes. Pica Pica is EVERYWHERE.

Now, it’s important to keep in mind that the itch inflicted by the dustings of Pica Pica is annoying but very tolerable. You sit down and get a super itchy spot on your leg for a few minutes. You hop into bed and you start itching. All inconveniences, but tolerable. What isn’t tolerable is a direct hit of Pica Pica.

That first winter, before I knew the wrath of Pica Pica, I marched up to a small tree covered in Pica Pica vines and dried up pods with a machete, boots and boardshorts. No shirt. I only hit the tree 4 or 5 times before the fibers showered my sweaty skin and started itching so bad my mind stopped working…and it intensified for about 15 minutes longer before it started becoming manageable. In that time frame, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you my middle name or been able to drive a car. The burning itch seemed super natural. Worse than any poison ivy, green head bite or sea lice sting I had ever experienced.

Ok, so now you know why I have a strong dislike for Pica Pica. Ok, let’s get into some facts about Pica Pica. I’ll also post some more pictures of Pica Pica, the leaf, the flower and the pod that we have found on the property.

The scientific name for Pica pica is Mucuna. The course hairs on the pods contain the proteolytic enzyme mucunain which cause the itch and sometimes blisters. It is a climbing vine and will strangle out other plants if you let it. Pica pica is found all over the caribbean and areas with a similar tropical wet/dry season weather pattern. Believe it or not, it is also considered to have many medicinal values and is used in herbalism. When the fine hairs attach to you, the more you itch the more you spread them around and push them further into your skin. Did I mention that Pica pica is also the active ingredient in many itching powders?

How to stop Pica pica itch? Bad news. Nothing helps relieve the itch of Picapica that I am aware of, but for me hopping in the shower and FRANTICALLY soaping my body over and over provided temporarily relief. Eventually, like super spicy hot sauce, the itch drops a notch and eventually goes away completely leaving no trace of it’s existence on your body.

Based on my experience over the past few years, I recommend eradicating all of the picapica from your property in the rainy season when it isn’t itchy. This way, when winter comes there will be no pods to dry out and make your windy afternoons uncomfortable.

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We absolutely love our chickens. They run around the yard all day like little dinosaurs and scratch up our lawn looking for insects, leaving their wonderful fertiliser behind, we get delicious fresh eggs from them (and we know what they were fed) and we love the fact that Sydney is growing up around farm animals. I love the fact that our daughter knows that eggs come from the chickens and not from the store.

We all know that as with most things, good is usually accompanied by bad. Nothing too bad, but if you’re like me you like to streamline your life into as few steps as possible so you have time to take new fun steps and spend your time enjoying things you love instead of a daily grind (which in this case was shooing chickens and cleaning up their poop).

Here’s the bad. Chickens poop everywhere! Not just where you want them to poop (grass, coop, yard etc), the chickens poop on the fence, on the cars, on the porch and the patio. These girls really poop a lot too…especially where they roost. Up until we owned chickens, I thought they only roosted in their coop, but they roost wherever they please when they are tired and once they find a good spot, they go there everyday. Our hens started roosting under our new back deck and pooping EVERYWHERE.

I searched and searched trying to find a way to keep the chickens away without putting up a fence and couldn’t find anything that didn’t involve chemicals or fences. Finally, I found the solution that we are using today on Amazon.com. It is a motion activated sprinkler that fires off short burst of water to scare the chickens away when they walk in front of it. Check out the video I put together showing the effectiveness of the Scarecrow motion activated sprinkler. This thing really saved my back patio. It cost $50 and was well worth every penny.

Check Out The Motion Activated Sprinkler In Action

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See larger image Contech CRO101 Scarecrow Motion Activated Sprinkler (Lawn & Patio) List Price: Price Not Listed New From: Check Amazon For Pricing In Stock Used from: $43.56 In Stock

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Have you ever wondered what $46 at the grocery store will get you in Rincon Puerto Rico? I went in the grocery store for a few things today, and this is what I walked out with. This is what $46 gets you at the Econo grocery store in Puerto Rico.

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WOW. That’s what I have to say about this project. I was against this fence project from the beginning and was eventually talked into doing it. Now that the posts are in, the fence is up and the trellis is built, I am so glad Summer talked me into it. The 20% that I need to complete is capping the rails with 1×6, building and hanging the gates and staining/water sealing the wood.

Cap The Rails of the Fence

The way I built the pickets on the fence was by cutting down 1×6 treaded lumber to 3ft and 4ft sections. The very front of the yard has a 4ft fence and the sides of the yard have a 3ft fence. The vertical 1×6 are sandwiched between two 2×4′s on the top and the bottom. On top of the top 2/4′s I am glueing and screwing 1/6 boards to give it a more finished look. I only have about three more cuts and I will be done with that. Next, time to build the gates.

Building/Designing the Gates

For a while, I was thinking that I was going to make the gate a foot or so higher than the rails on either side to get so that it would stand out and not blend in with the rest of the fence. I wanted to make it more of a focal point…BUT! After building the trellis, I don’t need to draw anymore attention to that area and I don’t want to take any attention away from the trellis. I think it looks really good. After building the trellis with 2×10′s and 2×4′s, I thought that the 4×4 posts looked a little wimpy for the big lumber up on top. Structurally it was sound, but it looked a little sally to me so I capped the 4×4 posts with 2×4′s and 2×6′s to give it a beefier look and was able to leave reveals on all four corners which gave it a very finished craftsman look.

With that said, my plan for the gate is to build a section of fence that looks like the rest of the fence line. I may use a 2×6 to cap it off instead of a 1×6 so I can give it a little bit of pizzaz compared to the rest of the fence. I checked home depot for gate hardware, but they only had one option in black and it wasn’t anything I liked. I want to have a handle with a thumb latch and I couldn’t find one at any of the local hardware stores so I checked a few stores out online and ended up ordering hardware (hinges, handle and latch) from Amazon.

Staining and Water Sealing The New Fence

This is a very important decision for us, not just for looks but for longevity. The rain and the sun in Puerto Rico reep havoc on wood that is exposed to the elements. I water sealed our back deck twice this year already and it is already looking weathered. I am currently research new water seals and stain combos that I can use instead of the Thompsons Water Seal I used on the deck. I really don’t want to have to seal the fence and deck every 6 months for the rest of my life. That would suck. Once I come to a decision, I’ll keep you guys in the loop in case you are in the market for some sealer and are interested in my findings.

Here Are A Few 80% Photos of the Fence

Our New Fence 80% Complete

This beautiful horse is not ours. She is visiting with Pintos “R” Us for Sydney’s birthday party. All the kids got a ride!

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I am fuming over another ridiculously high water bill this month. For the past year, we have been battling broken water lines and our water bill has increased 20x from what it was this time last year. About two months ago, I installed a brand new water main (dug a trench 100′s of feet and used schedule 80 PVC), tested the meter and had the water company come out and check their lines. All is well on the water front, right? Wrong.

I got a new bill yesterday. It was another giant one that got me to go off on a tangent to Summer about how expensive it was and then a neighbor about how expensive the utilities are in Puerto Rico and how ridiculous it is to deal with the companies when there is a problem. I’ve vented about the Internet down here on the blog a number of times, but I haven’t really gotten into the water company or power company. I think this is a big enough subject that I am going to break down the topics to one per blog post.

Electric Bills in PR

Today, I am going to bitch about PREPA. PREPA stands for Puerto Rico Elecric Power Authority. They provide 100% of the power to the island. The electric bills at our house range between $350 and $500 per month. We run the usual utilities like a washer, dryer, refrigerator and hot water heater. We don’t have air conditioning in the entire house (just our offices and they are energy efficient DAIKIN split inverter ac units) but we do have ceiling fans. We also have computers, monitors, speakers, stereos and printers on in our offices. With that said, all our screens/monitors are energy efficient LCD screens and our hot water heater is propane ($65-$90 per 6ft tank) and our electronics use is no more than an average household these days (phone charging, laptops etc).

Rinconians Thoughts on Power Costs

Conversations that I have had with other home owners and business owners regarding power bills here always turn ugly. It is rare that people don’t walk away angry at the power company and dismiss it because there is nothing we can do about it. If you want to live in Puerto Rico, you have to deal with the way Puerto Rico treats its tax paying citizens and how Puerto Rican companies treat their customers. It becomes a Puerto Ricanism. Love it or leave it. From what I have been told by both Americans and Puerto Ricans alike is that he rule of thumb here is, if your last name sounds Puerto Rican, you won’t get hassled but if your last name is American, you’re going to see an increase in your bills. I don’t want to believe that, but stranger things have happened.

I started doing research for this blog post and discovered a few interesting articles that back up the hearsay about our power bills;Puerto Rico power is more expensive per kilowatt-hour than anywhere in the United States. For example, we pay 29¢ a kilowatt-hour (kWh) in Puerto Rico. That is almost three times the U.S. average of 9.9¢. On top of that, if you are a business here with the utilities in the name of the business, you will pay even more for electricity, about 4¢-5¢ per kilowatt-hour (kWh) more. That’s right! Pay employees (payroll tax, hacienda taxes, social security, unemployment, workmen’s comp etc) who in turn spend their money in town on groceries, gas and entertainment and you will also have to pay more for your power. Like a company uses their power for evil? I think that is ridiculous and doesn’t seem like it should be legal.

Why do we pay so much for power?

I have a hard time believing that a country that has a national average income of $16,300 can afford to pay such high power bills. I have heard a few rumors about why this is true. One is that the government and the San Juan tourist hotels owe the power company over $300 million dollars. Apparently the debtors, are only making the minimum payments required by law to keep their power running. This kind of financial loss for PREPA could absolutely spill over and out of the consumers pocket. Another theory is that there is such massive abuse of the power companies inability to perform all the duties required of them, people are getting away with stealing electricity all over the island. Now, it might sound like a risky endeavor, but to all customers that have the old dial meters, it’s as easy as buying a high powered magnet an sticking it onto your meter. The dial, which spins to calculate the amount of power going into your house is made of metal, so the magnet will slow the spin down, thus showing less power used on the meter than was actually used. The strength of the magnet will dictate how much power you can steal.

There is a little more validity behind this theory as to why the power in Puerto Rico is so expensive. It id due to our dependance on oil to produce electricity. Coal is not readily available here like on the mainland in the United States so our power costs go up and down with the crude prices. Also, for doing such a slack job and being so unorganized, PREPA sure does have a lot of employees! On a megawatts served basis, PREPA (Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority) has more employees, offices, supervisors and administrators than any power company in the United States. Really? What are they all doing?

Apparently, they are sabotaging operations and generating plants! That’s right. Union employees were dragging their feet on projects and the blue collar union members became pawns for the political jousting their leaders were engaging in. Collective bargaining by the government with the Union to start generating power from Natural Gas to lower our reliance on costly oil was broken off by the union in the form of a strike. After the strike, a third party (Georgia Power Co.) was brought into assess the Power issues in Puerto Rico. They concluded that union members destroyed power lines, knocked down transmission towers and were sabotaging the generating plants. Ultimately, many unions members were fired and some were even convicted of the crimes they committed. Ultimately, over 400 of the union members that were fired were re-hired.

So there you have it. My rant on the ridiculously high electricity costs in Puerto Rico. These are just a few theories of why the electric bills in Puerto Rico are so expensive and I can’t really say any of them are facts. Even the Union is evil information I got was from a article that was politically motivated, so who knows how much of it is fact vs fabricated.

What type of experience have you had with the electric company in Puerto Rico? Did it take you months to get power? Did you have to bribe someone? Are your bills not that expensive or are they ridiculously high? I would love to hear everyone else’s experiences with the utilities here! Comment below!

Sources:

• http://www.caribbeanbusinesspr.com/news02_free.php?nw_id=7019&cl_id=1
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_pricing

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Saturdays With Summer; Chicken Chasing, Egg Collecting, Swing Swinging, Skateboard Swing Ripping, Baby Pool Splashing, Craft Table Coloring, Peanut Butter and Jelly Eating and Story Time Listening.

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Summer and I have gone back and forth on if we should or should not build a fence in the front yard. Originally, I was against the idea and wasn’t open to it. After a bit of back and forth, we made a decision.

Summer’s Selling Points: A fence in the front yard will be practical. Having the flat area of our front yard fenced in will make it easier to handle the dogs since we can’t leave them alone together. It will also allow us to close the gate with the dogs on the other side leaving a huge (non-cliff containing) play area for Sydney while we are cooking, hanging out in the living room and just hanging out. It will also give the immediate front yard a more finished decorative landscaped look.

Stefan’s Selling Points: Putting a fence in the front yard will make it seem smaller and it isn’t a practical expense. The lobor of digging 2 foot posts holes, the concrete and the decorative 4×4 posts is going to be expensive. If we are going to spend money on installing a fence anywhere, it should be spent on perimeter fencing so we could let our animals run free without the worry of them wondering off. Once our front gate is in, we would have a fully contained couple of acres.

Ultimately, I decided that Summer had a good argument. The fence will look great, it is going to allow us to let Sydney run wild while we are hanging around the house and we will have peace of mind regarding the dogs when we are out of town. Yep, that’s right, we are installing a decorative and practical fence in the front yard. Added bonus? The fence is going to provide shade for new plants, frame in the landscaping and it will house low voltage lighting along the posts to light up our treacherous rock driveway.

The Fence Plan: We haven’t built a fence before, so the plan is a little iffy. I’ll keep you updated via posts over the next week or two. To start, we pulled strings from corner to corner where we wanted the fence line. We then measured out post holes, dug the holes and cemented in (after priming the wood) 6ft long 4″x4″ treated grade A lumber. We bought the lumber from Don Benga True Value in Lajas (tel;(787)899-3025). Their wood is a world better than the treated lumber Home Depot sells. They sold 12 foot 4″x4″s so I bought 15 of them with the plan of cutting most them in half. The two around the gate will be 8ft with a trellis.

We decided to run 2″x4″s between the fence posts and fasten them with but joints. We are then going to space 1″x”6′s three inches apart around the outside of the fence. We are going to have 2 gates and 1 trellis. One gate will be by the hose spigot under the master bedroom and the other is going to be at the path entrance next to the driveway.

Check Out Some DIY Fence Pictures – Building A Fence TO BE CONTINUED…

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The walls of our house have been built for a couple of years now, but decorating the walls proved to be more difficult than actually building them. There isn’t much of an “art scene” to speak of in Rincon, so the art selection is pretty limited. There are a couple of small galleries here, and we’ve picked up a couple of pieces that we like, but the main room of our house has HUGE blank walls and we have had a hard time finding large works of art that we like. This year I’ve made it a priority to locate art because we are both so sick of looking at huge blank spaces and scratching our heads wondering what we should hang there. I bought two awesome photos from the oh so talented Tony Dooley of Uncharted Studios and had him print them on stretch canvas. 5ft x 3ft was the max printing size available. But they fit nicely above the windows in the great room.

Stefan had a good idea about wanting to hang a vintage surfboard, but hey, we don’t actually have one! Well just so happens that we have a friend that does and he needed a place to store it. Looks pretty good (and safe) hung above the doors to the back deck.

One of my good friends, Heather Moreau from Vallentyne Photography, came to visit and took some great family photos, so I had my favorite printed on stretched canvas and it now lives above the fish tank:

Next, I found this great print from Lara Zombie and ordered it online. Again, I purchased the largest size available, and it could stand to be twice as big to really fit our walls, but it will do for now:

Most recently, we were lucky enough to acquire a cool one-of-a-kind piece of art that was painted onto a retired surfboard. Jeremy, the artist, that painted this piece asked what kind of art I was into and after throwing some ideas around he went with a Day of The Dead style (which reminds me of growing up in San Diego and Mexico):

When we moved to Puerto Rico, we sold/donated nearly everything and brought to PR only one piece of artwork. Want to see it? It’s an awesome one-of-a-kind oil painting by super talented artist Jamie Kelly. It’s hung in our bedroom, so not a lot of people get to see it:

Sydney also has her own little collection of Puerto Rican art hung in her room:

The purple monkey on the left is by local artist Kurt Ziegler and the fish painting on the right was a gift to Sydney from artist Roberto Ortiz. It is titled “Matilda The Fish”.

So yes, I think we’ve finally broken through the “blank wall years” and have started filling our walls with some pretty cool art. If you are looking for some unique original artwork in Puerto Rico, our new friend Jeremy has a couple of pieces for sale. Check em out and let me know if you’re interested! (Or, you can email Jeremy about his artwork at tuneup350@netzero.net) :

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