California 2 Puerto Rico

Summer and I are anti-chemical when it comes to treating our house and yard for insects. We do our best to not allow standing water where mosquitoes will breed and I have started adding a cap full of bleach to the baby pool we leave in the back yard for the dogs. Despite all this, we are still going to have mosquitoes on the property (proven by the assault on my exposed skin at 4am last night) because of the cabrada (stream) and the puddles from all the rain. So, I did some research and found a few plants that will actually repel mosquitoes!

Plants that Repel Mosquitoes:

• Catnip
• Lemon Grass (aka. Citronella Grass)
• Marigolds
• Mosquito Plants
• Rosemary

Catnip: I know what you are thinking. Catnip is legal marijuana for cats and cheech is too young to experiment with such a controversial gateway drug. Don’t worry, catnip has another very useful purpose, it repels mosquitoes! The natural oils found in Catnip is actually a more effective mosquito repellent than the highly toxic DEET. You can plant it all around your outdoor living areas and you can also crush it up, retain the oil and use it as all natural mosquito repellent (I can’t guarantee cheech won’t kill you if you do this).

Lemon Grass: Lemon grass is a delicious herb used in many Thai recipes like Thai Grilled Chicken Salad with Lemon Grass Coriander Dressing and it is also a mosquito repellent. Lemon grass (aka: Citronella Grass) is a plant that grows in clumps, and can grow up to 6ft tall. I really like the idea of having lemon grass clumps planted around the yard because this stuff smells so good and grows as fast as grass. Uh, hence, lemon grass. The long and the short of it is this. If you plant a small clump of lemon grass by all of the windows downstairs, they will be 6 ft tall clumps of mosquito repelling love in 6 or 8 weeks .

Marigolds: Marigolds repel all kinds of bugs, not just mosquitoes. We planted Marigolds around our vegetables to try to help keep the little veggy eating bugs away from our booty. Marigolds do a good job repelling mosquitoes around the house, but they are annuals (life cycle of one year), so they are not going to live year around like some the other mosquito repelling plant options.

Mosquito Plants: This plant was created for the consumer. It is the hallmark holiday of plants. This plant (in my opinion) is banking on the ’sucker’ in all of us. What scientist would name a plant the Mosquito Plant! It is marketed heavily and as its name implies, it is a mosquito repelling plant. I did some research on the Mosquito Plant and can’t find any solid evidence that these things actually repel pesky mosquitoes, so I am just going to dismiss the Mosquito Plant as an option for us.

Rosemary: YES! Rosemary actually repels mosquitoes. I love this. Rosemary is one of my favorite herbs to cook with as it has a really strong unique flavor (great for marinating lamb/chicken, infusing with virgin olive oil). Rosemary also grows year around and can grow into quite a large plant. It can become a total ground cover (if properly groomed) or a beautiful hedge once it matures. Rosemary does better in more temperate climates and tropical climates, but it grows quick enough that if you are in an area that actually has seasons, you can grow it on the porch and then bring it inside come winter. The oils in rosemary also work as an all natural mosquito repellent.

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Stefan and I were surfing some secret river mouth the other day and came across a ton of coconut palms that were uprooted by the monster swell that just passed. So, we carried this orphaned palm home and gave him a new spot.

Hopefully he’ll like it here!

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As Summer mentioned, we had to stop spending money on big things to save for taxes, but that doesn’t mean we weren’t working. Even though progress on the construction slowed down, Summer and I have been sweating it out planting more trees, watering and weeding. I have come to enjoy walking around the yard in the morning (when there is no surf), drinking my coffee and watering our young trees.

It takes me about an hour and a half to water every new plant and tree in the front and back yard. I know that seems like a long time, but watering (and daydreaming about what it will look like in 5 years) puts me in a meditative state where I plan my work day, problem solve on projects I am working on and just plain old gets my day started right.

One of the tough things about planting in the dry season, is actually keeping the soil around the plants moist. When Eddie was down, he suggested we put old palm fronds around our plants to create shade for the roots. Upon that suggestion, I have been collecting palm fronds and placing them over areas that need to have shade from the son. It is much more economical than buying expensive cedar wood chips.

Because the soil stays moist around all of the plants that have shade around the root structure, they are less stressed and are growing well.

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Stefan and I have been putting some effort into planting trees in the backyard and it’s coming along nicely! We threw down some grass seed a couple of months ago and it’s growing in pretty darn good for the little to no effort we have put into it. Today and yesterday we planted two 6′ MacArthur Palms and we turned that cool twisted tree stump that Stefan found in the quebrada, into an exotic planter of sorts.

Two new MacArthur palms (left side):

I wanted to do something cool with the stump and I figured that planting things around it would bring it to life, so we planted a triangle palm, macarthur palm and a red heliconia, in front and behind the stump.

Stump before:

Stump after:

We also want to plant something between the triangle palm and heliconia, but we havn’t figured out what yet. Perhaps some herbs, flowers or a vegetable?

We have another macarthur palm, a red palm, a pair of avocado trees and a mini flamboyan that we are going to plant in the backyard tomorrow. We also picked up 4 new coconut palms at the beach today, but we havn’t decided where to put them yet…

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Stefan, Kuta, Monkey, Cheech and I were planting palms behind the house yesterday, trying to pimp out the backyard. We got two Areca Catechu’s in the ground and we were trying to figure out where to plant the red palm that we got from Montoso Gardens. Stefan figured out where it would look good and starting digging with the pickaxe…dig dig dig, dirt, rock, dirt, rock, rock, Medalla can, rock, dirt, THUNK. Uh oh.

Unfortunately we didn’t hit buried treasure. And the only gold we saw was a buried Medalla can. A sure sign that the plumber had been here a one time.

Stefan turned to me and asked if I remember where the ditch was that we layed the sewage line. I took a look at the house and then at the septic tank and it was pretty much a straight line where Stefan was standing with the pickaxe.

Whoops!

So we put our landscaping plan on hold and Stefan ran to the ferrateria (hardware store) to try and get some pipe to repair our septic line. Unfortunately it was Saturday at 3pm and all of the ferraterias were closed. Luckly, there is a plumber that lives in our neighborhood and Stefan found some scrap pipe in his yard.

We cut out the damaged part of the pipe and definately did some ghetto style plumbing. But after 2.5 hours, it works and it doesn’t leak, so mission accomplished.

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It’s weird for me to go from working out in a gym 4 times a week, to not really knowing what to do with myself, since we moved to Puerto Rico. I guess it’s just transitioning from Southern California to Puerto Rico, but I certainly got a workout today, while working in the backyard. Killing two birds with one stone!

Here is what went down…

First, grab a cinderblock from the cinderblock pile:

Run the cinderblock 100 yards to the other side of the house (and place in line):

Repeat 15 times.

Run down to the dirt pile and shovel dirt into the wheelbarrow:

Run the wheelbarrow up the hill:

Shovel dirt into cinderblock “planter”:

Repeat steps 3 - 5 ten times.

Everything was fairly easy, except for running the wheelbarrow up the hill. That was HARD. I had to get a running start at the bottom, which would get me half way up. Then I would have to set down the wheelbarrow, (so it wouldn’t slide back down) and reposition my feet. Then I would literally have to inch up the rest of the way. I’m sure my neighbors probably were watching me and laughing their butts off.

Nonetheless, we got a nice temporary planter around the backside of the house so we can start growing out our jungle

After planting some ginger, birds of paradise, etc.

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Summer and I were clearing out underneath the mango tree in the back yard a couple weeks ago and notices a bunch of sprouts that we thought could have been palm trees. Without looking at them closer, you might thing they were just thick strands of grass. We watched them grow and decided that we think they may actually be Royal Palms.

It is my understanding the only way that royal palms will grow is after they have been digested and pooped out of a bird. Our theory is that all of the birds that were hanging in our mango tree this summer must have pooped us some royal palm seeds!

At any rate, I transplanted about a dozen of them into small pots; lets see how they do.

They are still in the ground here | Still kinda look like grass

Here some of them are in their happy new home

Do you think they are Royal Palm Saplings?

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Is all of my hard work landscaping just taming the property or is landscaping the property taming me? I have been at it a lot lately and now I am quite enjoying it. I have come to the conclusion that I will be doing at least fifteen hours of yard work every week for the duration of my life at our house here in Rincon, so maybe enjoying the yard work is a good thing. Although it is still difficult land to work, it is getting easier two fold;

1. I am using the tools in a more efficient manner
2. I see the light

I am using the pick, a sharpened shovel, sometimes gloves and a giant steel bar that I can drop to the ground with a boat load of digging power. I have the hoses hooked up to one another so that I can water any plant/tree in the front yard without having to dedicated time to attaching hoses and switching water sources. I clear out all of the weeds, flatten an area to catch rain water (instead of it flowing right on past), backfill with a mix of potting soil, pete moss and local dirt. Then, I cover the dirt above the root structure with pebbles and rocks from around the property to shade the soil from the sun (it is amazing how much a little shed helps keep moisture in the soil)

When we first started landscaping (back when we had the topsoil dumped for the grass in the front yard) it really seemed like we had a long way to go. We knew that there wouldn’t be much immediate gratification (aside from the lawn) as far as mature plants and trees. Well, I think we have been working hard on the landscaping for a few months now, and I am starting to envision what it will be. It is hard to imagine what your front yard could look like when it is baron, dry, rutted and rocky. For me, I saw a few before/after pictures of other peoples yards and realized how fast and big a lot of these plants can get. Seeing those before/after pictures along with the solid schedule of planting in the front yard and now I am daydreaming in my hammock about a fruit and vegetable producing front yard that has plenty of shade, flowers to trim and privacy.

This first picture is of a young Canango tree. The Canango tree is a fast growing tree that will reach heights of 12 meters in just a few years. This tree produces the Ylang Ylang flower, made famous by Channel No. 5 perfume, which will make everything within 20 feet of the tree smell like it just finished a relaxing four hour aromatherapy session. Needless to say, we will be planting the Canango Tree and its Ylang Ylang flower in close proximity to the front master bedroom windows. Those trade winds will blow the fragrance through our master bedroom 24/7.



Ylang Ylang Flower | Potted Cananga Tree


I am envisioning the front of the property by the gate filling in with big trees. The ficus we planted right in the center of the yard will get huge, allowing us to plant things under it that will need shade and 30 feet further up the hill is the gate. I have planted about seven avocado trees in that area. As they grow up I’ll keep snipping them and try to keep them lower to the ground and fill in more space. I also planted a few different types of avocados that produce at a different time of year. I can see friends planning their visits around avocado season (or mango, or orange, or guava, or papaya). Here is the biggest of our avocado trees on the property (I just planted it today)






Avocado Tree | Five foot tall sapling


We don’t really know what we are going to do with the driveway yet. It is going to stay like it is for a while (both our trucks have four wheel drive 4X4) so I decided to plant some heliconia around the tree. It seems like a good enough spot to me. They will spread like crazy and should give us some beautiful flowers at ground level. The tree I planted them below is an African Violet. It has great flowers up high at certain times of the year.






Red Heliconia | African Violet Tree


This Egret or White Heron landed while I was taking pictures of the new Avocado tree. It is amazing what happens when you start to get some green. This property was so dry and baron after we scraped it that we weren’t getting any birds, coqui’s or any signs of life. It is cool that this guy decided to show up while I had my camera. I didn’t know it until I looked it up a few minutes ago, but the White Heron is all over the tropics eating fish, frogs and insects. Does this mean that our property is inhabitable by insects now (the bird is eating them)? This picture with the arrows of all of the plants we have put in the ground doesn’t show the 10 or 12 trees above me on the hill and you can’s see another half a dozen beyond the leaves of the palms. It is going to look good in a couple of years if I keep this up.






Great Egret | White Heron


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Strange as it seems, I don’t own the water that is runs through the water table under our house. The Puerto Rican government owns it. Even stranger than that, is that the government leases it out to privately held companies to sell water to people that live on the island. Crazy water people.

Summer and I have kicked around the idea of using well water as it is much cheaper than city water and it will allow us to water our plants without limit AND we could have good water pressure in the house. As it stands, if the sprinklers are on it is gonna take you a long time to get the shampoo out of your hair. The thing is, we just didn’t see the practicality of spending a couple of thousand dollars on a well when our water bills are so cheap. Well, all that changed last week.

Apparently, our water bill is simply an estimate based on our water consumption over the past year. So, every month they save money by not sending out meter readers by just estimating. We have been paying between $18 and $45 dollars a month…not too bad considering we are watering, living, mixing cement etc. This past month, we go a water bill from the water company. But this bill was after the meter reader read our meter and calculated how much water we had used over the past 4 months versus how much water we were charged for. There was a big difference. I got a water bill for $425. Time to investigate a well.

Watering our new plants and lawn…$425 worth

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I am such a novice in this construction thing. I was a typical office worker (that surfed and came from a fairly active background) that was making some money and decided to give up the life in the fast lane for a couple acres in Puerto Rico and a fun little project (sarcasm). Finish a six bedroom, two bath house in Rincon Puerto Rico. Haha! Give up the fast lane? I have been busier now than I have ever been in my life and I have spent more Cash Money in the past eight months than I ever did in Las Vegas, San Francisco, Manhattan or La Jolla gourmet restaurants and clubs combined.

I have learned so much (including how to spend money), but today young grasshopper, I give you advice from an experienced (1 project) Do-It-Yourselfer. This advice will help you keep it together on a big project like ours. Every time we do a clean up, I feel a million times better about our progress around the house. So, here is my advice to you: Keep your construction site clean and organized

Today, I had a little Tom Cat come and scrape all the extra concrete, scrap wood and trash out of our backyard. We worked filling two large dump trucks (about 8 meters each) for about four hours and are now pretty much ready to plant some grass seed in the backyard.

We are also expecting our plants from Montoso Gardens tomorrow…so before they get here with the tropical plant and fruit delivery, I am having 8 meters of Top Soil dumbed down by the mango tree so we can make a little shaded nursery area for some of the younger plants and have the ability to back fill the big plant holes with rich top soil.

Starting the clean up of our back yard

Our Rincon backyard looking pretty good.

It feels great to see our back yard clean like this. I wish I kept it clean and organized from the beginning, it would have saved me so many headaches.

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