Rooster on the Front Porch

Our crazy rooster, that attacks Summer all the time, is quite brave. This afternoon, he (and his hens) were cruising around the front yard and decided to take a closer look at how humans live in Rincon. He cruised right up to the porch like it was nobody’s business and claimed the house as his own. Summer, Sydney and I are moving to the chicken coop next week.

Cheech the Cat Likes the Baby Chickens

Cheech absolutely loves the new chickens. He doesn’t want to eat them at all. He is just inspecting them to make sure none of them are sick or need medical attention. Cheechers says meow!!!

Composting our green waste in the kitchen removes at least half of all or the waste from the trash can (that I bring to the top of the driveway. If all the kitchen waste is composted properly, it will provide a thriving environment for our garden, plants and trees. Compost inoculates soil with beneficial microbes (bacteria, fungi, etc.) and the habitat that the microbes need to live. These microbes are able to extract nutrients from the mineral part of the soil and eventually pass the nutrients on to our plants.

Kitchen Compost Container

Composting – Step 1

The first step to our family and visiting friends composting is making it easy for everyone. We have a small tupperwear container in the kitchen next to the sink that we dump all of our ‘green’ waste in to. We put everything in our compost except meats and dairies. A typical full compost bin upstairs will have egg shells, fruit peels, vegetable peels, discarded lettuce, coffee grounds (w/filter) and paper towels.

Compost Tumbler

Composting – Step 2

The indicator for moving to step 2, is that the tupperwear container next to the sink is full (sarcasm). Usually, once a day, we bring the container downstairs and dump it into our compost tumbler. The compost tumbler we have is perfect for a small family with a small yard. It is a round bin on a stand that takes our family (with guests) about 2 months to fill up. We turn it 1-3 times a day to airate it and I check it regularly for ant infestations. When you open the door to the composter, the interior of the tumbler is hot from the decomposition going on inside it all day long. The balance between vegetable matter and dry grass/leaves is important. The correct balance will leave you with a compost that does not smell at all.

Composting – Step 3

Backyard Lasagna Compost - Making Black Gold

Now, after a few weeks of lasagna composting, we get what is referred to in the garden world as BLACK GOLD. Black gold is the finished product of composting. It is very dark, almost black, earthy and smells like soil (not rotting veggies). You should not be able to recognize any of the original ingredients. If you want to learn more about composting, check out this Wiki on composting.

Summer and I compost because it is satisfying and rewarding. The little bit of extra work has worked its way seemlessly into our routine and we reap the benefits everytime we enjoy vegetables from our garden.

Termites have eaten their way through gardening equipment handles, expensive palm trees but mostly just kill the undesirable Salsa trees. These trees grow like weeds everywhere and take all the nutrition away from other more desirable trees (shade year around, fruit etc).

When we moved into this place we had no trees in the back yard. The yard had been recently bulldozed and we started from scratch with a few sprouted coconuts we found. Over the years we have been clearing out the Salsa trees, planting more stuff and trying to create a cool landscape. We had one Salsa tree that grew big quick, so we kept it for shade in the summer time but this year, it didn’t survive the termites.

I cut it down yesterday (with a reciprocating saw ) and now our back yard is landscaped EXCLUSIVELY with plants and trees that we planted ourselves. It’s a cool feeling to have, especially now that some of them are 8ft plus tall.

We made another trip out to the nursery and spent a couple hundred dollars on a new batch on injertado (grafted) fruit trees and this time, we are protecting our investment! Stefan came up with a plan of using PVC pipe to create little tree jackets to protect our trees from wayward weedwackers. While this is a great plan, it’s kind of a pain in the butt to go buy PVC and cut it to fit each tree, so I made a trip down to the $1 store and bought a bunch of plastic hair curlers. They are much easier to cut then PVC, and you can just add more curlers if the tree is taller. Hopefully this will work!

Our new batch of fruit trees:

Our trees wear fashionable light blue “armor”:

Popular Mortgage | Banco Popular Mortgage Division

As everyone knows that pays attention to the sensationalism passed off as news on the television everyday, the world is in a financial crisis. The sky is falling and chicken little (strong rooster in PR) is running around confused causing hysteria. Well, such is capitalism, and those of us who did not live over extended on our credit and ‘perceived’ value of our homes for the past ten years can now reap the benefits of being financially responsible consumers. Right? I don’t think so.

I filled out the paperwork and payed Banco Popular over $700 to survery, appraise and do all the paperwork associated with refinancing our Rincon home (primary resident) and just last week (after multiple phone calls and visits) they told me the offer has changed, I need a second appraisal (another $150) and they raised my required hazard insurance (equivalent to home owners insurance) from $65 a month to $281.53 a month! They also added a $2,000 fee that they labeled as a mortgage loan discount (FYI Banco Popular: if it’s a discount, you subtract money, not add it, it’s the little button on your calculator that looks like a plus sign, without the vertical line) and they added a $2,600 cancellation fee for canceling my old loan to refinance with the new one. All this has been making me furious. I am dealing with mortgage brokers who answer yes/no questions with a 10 minute explanation that always ends up with some sort of sales person style tie down and a question back to me along the lines of: “are you ready to move forward. sign the paperwork today!”

You have got to be fricking kidding me. Four months and counting on a refinance with Banco Popular? Aside from all the new fee’s they added, they are trying to ignore them and just get me to close the deal. Here is what I have for your deal Banco Popular. I curse you to eat Noni for breakfast, lunch and dinner for the rest of your life. When you get sick, I hope some comes out your nose and it burns and you smell that noni puke for days and days.

Banco Popular | Investments and CD Accounts

When we bought our house, we agreed to place 20% of the value of our home in a 2 year CD Account with Banco Popular as collatoral that we were not going to default on a home that was not finished construction. Heck, all our property and the unfinished home wasn’t enough, which I was cool with. I make interest off the money for two years, Banco Popular doesn’t have to worry about selling the frame of a house and we’re all good. Well, now it’s two years later and they won’t let me cash in my CD Account with them. They tell me that they need some collateral for the mortgage. Hmmm, Isn’t my 5 bedroom, 3 bath house (marble, granite, mahogany) the type of collateral most banks have on mortgages? More over, I received a letter two weeks ago saying that I had a 5 days grace period to pick up the check (cashed in CD Account) or it would be automatically re-instated for two years. But now, I go in and ask for my money and they say there is a hold on it from the office in San Juan. I have been in the Rincon office of Banco Popular 3 times this week and everytime they say they are working on it.

Today, I contacted a Puerto Rico real estate lawyer and then went into the bank. I told them I was not going to leave until the ‘mix up’ was resolved. The Rincon branch manager did not know what was going on and passed the task on to someone else earlier in the week. Today, I walked right into his office, sat down at his desk and told him that if they couldn’t provide a reason (contract with my signature on it) to continue holding my money without me making interest on it, I was not going to leave his office. I told him I would ruin his day if he didn’t pick up the phone and start making phone calls.

Ultimately, the reason for all this is because they can not find my original Popular Mortgage paperwork. I told them that I have a copy and I’ll bring it in so they can give me my money. They said that the paperwork had to be internal Banco Popular paperwork. Ok, so let me get this straight here; Banco Popular is disorganized. Banco Popular lost my mortgage paperwork. Banco Popular is unsure what is going on, so instead of giving me my money that I signed into a two year account (they have copies of the two year CD paperwork), they are going to hold on to it until they can get their business more organized.

I thought putting all that in writing would make me feel better. The only time my blood pressure even dropped a little bit was at the mention of our daughter. And now it’s back up again. Here is how I classify all this, and this is the end of my rant. I need to get back to work:
Puerto Rico Bank Banco Popular is Stealing From Us

Look! Little Starfruits!

A green starfruit and the pretty pink blossoms the trees produce:

I wasn’t really that into starfruit when I lived in California, because the only starfruit you could get were fairly flavorless. But, when you can pick a starfruit off of a tree when it’s bright yellow and ripe, it’s SO delicious. You can eat the skin and there are no seeds or core, so it’s kind of a pick n go fruit. The taste is sweet, but not too sweet and the texture is sort of like a cross between a pear and an apple.

Another big plus is that the starfruit tree is actually really pretty. It has bright green leaves and pretty little pink flowers when it blooms. I’m glad we planted it in the front yard .

More cool stuff about starfruit (or carambola): Starfruit is consider to be a “superfruit” because it is high in vitamin C, rich in antioxidants, while being low in sugar, acids and sodium. It also makes a great garnish as it makes perfect little star shapes when cut in slices.

On Saturday, we drove out to Mayaguez looking for new vessel sinks for the master bathroom and to find a lumber yard called H. Keller that sells Teak, Mahogany and other types of termite proof hardwoods. After 3 unsuccessful stops at random bath stores and finding H. Keller closed, Summer and I headed over to the Nursery in Cabo Rojo where I bought our first round of trees. Our goal, buy more fruit trees to fill in the side and back yard where I have gained control of the jungle and pica pica.

After Googling many of the plant names (in Spanish) to figure out exactly what we were getting/looking at, we chose eighteen (18) new baby trees to add to our property. They averaged out to be about $8 each (grafted fruit trees) but we did buy one expensive tree for $35, a Magnolia Tree. Summer was really excited when she found it (I had to do a Google image search to see what they look like mature) so we added it to our plant wagon (I love that they give you a Radio Flyer type wagon to fill up with plants while walking around the nursery) and filled up the backseat of the car with our agricultural addition to our family to save it from the 60mph wind the back of the pick-up would experience on the way home.

When we got home, we had just enough time to unload the truck to our backyard, set up the plants for watering and start day dreaming about how much food our property will be producing in five (5) years.

Here is a shot of our Saturday plant score:

Assorted grafted fruit trees and a Magnolia Tree

Directions to Cabo Rojo Nursery

If you would like to find the nursery, it might be a little tough if you’ve never been there before. It actually took us a couple of wrong turns before I found it and I’ve been there before! Here are some map screenshots for you to help you find your way. If you click on the photo, an enlarged version will pop up. I would advise finding it on Google Maps using our photos as a stepping stone.

Any how, no biggie. Stuff grows so quick here that I should be able to regrow everything pretty quickly.

On a more positive note, most of the trees are thriving and I can see HUGE amounts of growth on them since I’ve been gone. I am blown away at how quickly flamboyant trees grow! In the 45 days I’ve been gone some of the flamboyants have gone from being 3′ tall to being 5′ tall (no joke)! And to my surprise, we are already getting FRUIT on some of the tiny trees we’ve planted (less then a year ago).

Check out our peanut butter fruit tree:

I planted the peanut butter fruit tree about 6 – 8 months ago and it has nearly doubled in size. The peanut butter fruit tree is one of the exotic fruit trees we got from Montoso Gardens and the fruit tastes just like peanut butter. And if you pick the fruit early (when it is orange) it tastes like carrots. Kinda Willy Wonka, eh? Any how, the peanut butter fruit tree is already fruiting (and it is not even grafted)!!

Cool!!

We also have a lime growing off of our tiny lime tree:

The lime tree is “inhertado” (I may have spelled it wrong…that is Spanish for grafted), but it is still funny to see a big ol’ lime hanging off of a little stick of a tree.

We have also found that the avocado tree down by the quebrada is indeed producing HUGE avocados (Kuta is STOKED with all the delicious treats he is finding down there now) and we have found a papaya tree and guava tree on our property too.

You can see how the lawn looked 7 full days before I cut it here. I know it doesn’t seem like too long, but the lawn was out of control in these pictures…by the time I got to cutting it, it was a slow and tedious endeavor.

I clipped some red and yellow heliconias, deep pink ginger flowers, areca palm frans and a giant tahitian torch ginger flower (from Mark). I got the idea after trimming up the front planters and thinking that it was a waste to throw away such pretty flowers…So I stuck them in a vase and made Stefan admire them. Then the wind promptly blew the vase over and broke it (yes, we really do get a strong breeze through our house), so I had to throw out the bouquet. Oh well…At least I got a picture…ha.