Star Players – Landscaping Games 2008
I didn’t realize, and I’m sure most first time home buyers and Do It Youselfers don’t realize how much coin it actually takes to build a house; kitchen cabinets, tile, grout, skilled labor, treated wood, finishing wood, counter tops, appliances, wiring, lighting, fans, floors, locks, driveways, furniture……
Summer and I are managing the expensive work little by little and enjoying our new home AND as you guys know, we are landscaping like crazy. Much like investing in a home in a booming town like Rincon, all of the landscaping we do today is going to be mature and beautiful in 5 years which makes our time spent on the yard an investment.
I was walking around the yard with my coffee this morning, watering our garden, and decided that I wanted to show you guys all of our star players:
I planted this flamboyant tree on the side of our hill about 6 months ago. It really likes it there because it is growing like crazy and looks really healthy. We just need to keep the vines off of it (and all the other plants)
These are Elephant Ears transplanted from Dennis Richs’ Pool Bar. These guys must be prehistoric, because they are just huge. Definitely the fastest growing plant we have so far.
This flamboyant tree started at 6” tall 6 months ago and is reaching for the sun. Once these Flamboyant trees mature, they are going to provide great shade and beautiful flowers.
This is the state tree of Costa Rica, it is called a Guanacaste Tree. They look like the Flamboyant tree but get to be 6x the size! Great shade tree down the line.
Everything in our planter is BLOWING UP! If you look closely you’ll see Ginger (red flowers), Christmas Palm trees, some invasive plant from the stream bed, passion fruit vines and some flowers that Summer planted.
We almost named our street, Crooked Palm Lane because a bunch of Palms we bought last year were all super crooked. We have been staking them and trimming them to help them straightne out. This Queen Palm is getting less crooked everyday.
These palms (I think a Royal Palm or King Palm) are so green and majestic when they are mature…I’m looking forward to seeing this one dead center in our front yard.
This rubber tree is well over 12ft tall now, it was about 2 ft when we planted it 6 months ago.
All in all, our trees and plants are loving the rainy season down here. Hopefully, we won’t have to water them everyday once the dry season kicks back in. I am really looking forward to the privacy and shade all of these trees are going to provide us one day.
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September 8th, 2008 at 1:22 pm
I have been reading your blog for about a week now. We are also from California and planning to move to Puerto Rico. Our story is a little different though we have family that lives there in Coamo. We will also be living in Coamo we have land there and plan on building a house. We have 4 kids but 3 are in college and by the time we leave our youngest will be in either 8th or 9th. We cant wait we usually go there every year and stay a month with my sister in law and brother in law who are also from California. I have enjoyed reading about your adventures and have learned quite a bit. Your house and garden are turning out beautiful. I cant wait till we move and start our adventure. I told my husband that I want to be over there bythe time I turn 40 so we have a little under 2 years. God willing it will be sooner Thanks for sharing your life and adventures with us. Amy
September 8th, 2008 at 4:20 pm
I have been reading your blog for about a week now. We are also from California and are planning to move to Puerto Rico. Our story is a little different though, we have family that lives in Coamo. We will also be living in Coamo, we have land there and plan on building a house. We have 4 kids but 3 will be in college by the time we leave and the youngest will be in 8th or 9th grade. We cant wait we usually go there every year and stay with my sister in law and brother in law who are also from California. I have enjoyed reading about your adventures and have learned quite a bit. Your house and garden are turning out beautiful. I cant wait till we move and start our adventure.I told my husband that I want to be over there by the time I turn 40 so we have a little under 2 years. God willing it will be sooner. Thanks for sharing your life and adventures with us. Amy
September 8th, 2008 at 5:04 pm
Isn’t gardening here the most exciting thing ever? In the 10 months we’ve been here we have planted parcha FROM SEED and eaten around 25 parcha, we planted papayas 7 months ago FROM SEED and now have papayas (not ripe yet but big, I collect and plant seeds from the roadside and food we eat (flambouyant, peppers, mamey, canistel, rambutan,teak, orchid tree etc) and now have 13 foot TREES! Even my rambutan germinated and is a few inches tall. Yikes! I love your elephant ears (we don’t have those) and the rubber tree looks really neat.Now you can start the propagating factory so you can make more of what you have and move it around. Lots of great work and you are right – big benefits in a short amount of time! katrina