California 2 Puerto Rico

Yesterday I did a lot of yard work. I am not going to say that it is a disadvantage, but having all this property is going to be a lot of work. Aside from removing about another 75 square yards of Pica Pica, I planted Bermuda Grass seed in the flat area in front of the house. I also bought two bad ass sprinklers from Home Depot that cover the entire seeded area. According to the bag, the germination period for the grass seed is 2-4 weeks. One of my buddies that used the same seed had grass in less then two weeks and was mowing it by week four.

Come on Green!

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Although the front of our property is pretty baron because of all of the excavation we have done, the surrounding property is lush with Mango trees, palm trees, salsa trees and a bunch of other jungle looking foliage.

For the past month, all my friends and neighbors have been telling me I need to go into the jungle and trim all of the pica pica (translates to: Itch Itch). Everyone says how bad it is, once the winter hits because the pods grow little fiberglass like hairs that will blow in the wind into your house, onto your sheets, on your laundry hanging on the line to dry, into your car, onto the wax on your surfboards…etc. You get the point.

Everyone that has told me these horror stories has gotten the same response from me; “Will you please show me exactly what the vine looks like so I can go down there and eradicate it?” Instead of giving me answers or walking me up to a plant, they continue telling me how bad it is. I hate asking a question and having to politely listen to someone sensationalized answer that never even comes close to answering the question, especially when it comes to something that seems so time sensitive.

Unfortunately for me, I got the closest thing to an answer yesterday and it seems that almost every vine we have hanging on both sides of our house (about 2 acres….covered) is some form of Pica Pica. I am not stoked on that.

Yesterday, I started cutting down the underbrush (covered in Pica Pica) at the top of the property. My goal is to complete the entire property in two weeks. This section took me 3 hours. I should have taken a before picture…it was 7ft tall. The tough thin is that you need to chop up the vine in an up and down motion before you can cut out the bottom of the plant or the Pica Pica just moves lower to the ground..and once the huge labyrinth of vines are on the ground…still alive, it is impossible to get to it and chop it up and it stops you from going the next 10 feet. Here is the start of my fantastically itchy voyage.

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I shoved a bunch of Hibiscus clippings into the ground last month because Mark told me that it will just grow. You don’t need to get it to root in water, you just need to shove it into the ground. Some of our ground was so hard that I had to hammer a piece of rebarb into the ground first to “pre-drill” a hole for it. I pretty much stuck about 40 pieces into the ground and forgot about them.

One month later, it is amazing how well they are all doing. They have green leaves and branches popping out all over the place and this one even grew a flower!

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If you have been following our www.ca2pr.com then you already know that Summer and I are very anxious to get our landscaping started. The hardest part is the first couple of months, then, once the plants are over the “shock period” they will grow like crazy.

For the past two weeks I have been calling around trying to get the best deal for topsoil, sod, a backhoe and getting rid of all of the rubbish we have piled up in the front and back yard.

Today, I finally closed the deal. Here is how it breaks down.
1. Topsoil - $17.50 a meter (we are getting 20 meters; almost two dumptrucks)
2. Backhoe - $35 an hour (4 hours)
3. Load and Haul away all our rubbish - $150

The deal I finally negotiated is $525 for all of the above.

Having grass (at least 6 weeks from today) should help with all of the dirt we are tracking into the house..just in time for the IPE Hardwood Floors to go down. It’s all got to get dirtier before it gets cleaner!

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Today, Jerry and I decided to take a major road trip and try to find some hard to find things. Puerto Rico travel isn’t the easiest thing to do when you are looking for stores, farms…pretty much anyplace you haven’t been before. Luckily, Jerry is a pretty good guide. We didn’t get everywhere on the first try, but having someone that speaks perfect spanglish is a plus. Our travel mission, taking about 8 hours, for yesterday was the following:

• Big Palm Trees (Cheap)
• 36” Pipe for around the front downstairs windows (topsoil will be up to the bottom of the window)
• Epoxy Thinset (to install the marble we bought for the bathrooms)
• Marmolina (Bought 80 bags at home depot for $2.99 a bag with delivery..the local Rincon Freterria was $3.59)
• Inspect the Granite Yard where we are going to buy our granite

We accomplished everything…well, not really.

We found the Palm Tree farm in Lajas. It wasn’t easy to get to, but after asking for directions and finding about 3 other nurseries, we found the Palm Tree Farm in Lajas Puerto Rico. Unfortunately, they are only open from 7:00am until 12:00pm so we were S.O.L. once we got there, but now we know where it is. It was pretty cool to see hundreds of 30ft palms lining the fields. I also got all of their contact information.

Palm Tree Farm in Lajas Puerto Rico
Website: Palmas Ornamentales Puerto Rico
(787) 568-6394

We drove around Mayaguez for about 30 minutes looking for the store that sells big pipe (36”), and we completely struck out. No one knew where we were talking about and we couldn’t find it on our own. We need to use the pipe to cover the windows to the basement before we fill in the topsoil. I found this example on Google Images of what we are trying to accomplish. This image shows a pipe cut in half, pushed up against the window and then backfilled to the very top on the outside protecting the ground level windows. We won’t be backfilling that high, but it is pretty close to what we are going to do.

Basement Window Shield

We went to 3 or 4 tile stores with no luck finding our Epoxy thinset for setting the marble. Two of them carry the item, but didn’t have it in stock. And in a very typical Puerto Rico fashion, no one had any idea when their next shipment may come in. We may have to drive all the way to San Juan to get the epoxy thinset…which would suck. But, the show must go on and not finding this stuff has all but stopped the progress of finish work inside the house. Marble is so heavy that you can’t just use normal thinset to attach it to the walls (concrete board) like you do with tiles and travertine. You need to apply special epoxy glue in order to adhere it securely to the walls.

I figured out that Home Depot Puerto Rico has the cheapest marmolina. They are going to be delivering a full pallet of marmolina to our house on Wednesday morning. A pallot contains 80 bags. We are going to use a mix of marmolina and concrete (7 to 1 ratio of marmolina to concrete) to plaster all of the concrete block walls downstairs. It will be a nice smooth finish (with a little texture…not like polished concrete). If the guys show up to do the work, we should have it done in 4 working days. When using concrete on walls, it is best to complete an entire room with the same batch so all the walls in that room have the same exact texture. Mixing concrete by hand is not a complete science, so there will be some minor differences in the batches so to avoid different textured walls in the same room, you complete a room a day. These guys (twins) offered the job at $80 a day per person. So, essentially, $160 a day for 4 days should complete the walls downstairs.

One of the nurseries we were guided to on our Puerto Rico adventure just so happened to be right next to the granite yard where we are considering buying our granite from. They didn’t nearly have as many slabs of granite as I expected to see. I saw a big slab of the granite summer and I liked the most…seeing that much of it in one spot (instead of our little sample) has me thinking twice about the kitchen counter tops again. One of the tough things about building your kitchen, is that things like counter tops and cabinets need to be spec’d out weeks and weeks before you see the finished product. Not only is it hard to conceptualize the finished product (without the help of an architect or interior designer) but every day we wait is another day to wait in 4-6 weeks from now.

The only really bad news out of yesterday (aside from summer going back to california) was that the Bronco broke down when we were half way home. We pulled into the parking lot of Puerto Rico Wire Company, hopped out of the truck and notice fluid spewing from the bottom of the truck. That is never good. When I went to walk around the truck I noticed a trail of the same fluid going from the street into exactly where we parked. We were loosing the fluid at a high rate. After dipping my finger in it, feeling the texture and then smelling it, I came to the conclusion that it was transmission fluid. That is no bueno. Unfortunately, when I checked, we were completely out of fluid. I refilled it with three more quarts and got it home with almost no leakage but this morning when I woke up, it was empty again. The long and the short of it is that the transmission in the bronco is shot. Looks like it’s time to dump some more money into the hoopty.

When all was said and done, even if we didn’t get everything that we set out to do accomplished, we traveled the entire west coast of the island and I found new stores that may help in the construction of the house and thanks to my guide, I know how to get back there without getting lost. Sucks about the truck.

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This week we moved a lot of dirt. One of our neighbors up the street did some excavating down by the quebrada and dumped about 70 meters of topsoil at the top of our property. Instead of hiring an earth mover to come in and move the dirt, we decided to move it by hand (shovel it into the back of the bronco) and bring it on down to the planters. There, we emptied it onto a piece of plywood and mixed with high grade topsoil and pete moss. Then we shoveled it into the planters….a great place for happy plants to live.

It took us all day, and when all was said and done, it probably would have been more economical to hire a back-hoe, but our lesson was learned and now we finally have some green on our property.

The back of the truck is filled with free topsoil…then we mix it with the goods

Mixing dirt with our plants set up for planting

Closeup of the Palm Trees we scored for the Landscaping

The finished product. Grow, grow, grow!

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Stefan and I really want to get our yard/landscaping going since greenary makes SUCH a difference for a property (plus it takes years to grow into the lush tropical jungle we imagine our property being, so the sooner the better).

In California, I always thought “a palm tree is a palm tree”, but now that we’re actually looking closer into plants/landscaping, there are hundreds (thousands?) of different types of palm trees to choose from. And everyone seems to call the same palm tree by different names, here in Puerto Rico, which makes it difficult when you’re trying to tell someone what kind of palms you want. Stefan and I love the royal palms. And we’ve been told that they are queen palms, king palms, christmas palms and royal palms (the palms we like are ROYAL PALMS). So I did a little research on palms on the internet and put together the pictures here.

Coconut Palms - Coconut palm trees are VERY common here in Puerto Rico, because they grow like weeds. Any where we go there are coconuts chillin’, with roots and leaves growing out of them. Hills, valleys, beaches, etc, you will find coconut palms. They’re so common that here in Puerto Rico, people rip them out of their lawns and toss them over their fences (or tell us to come get them…haha). I call them the “messy palms” because they are kind of scraggly and not as neat looking as many of the other palms, but hey, I’ll take what I can get when my yard looks like this

King Palms - I’m still confused on what exactly makes a King Palm, a King Palm. They look very similar to what I’ve been told are Christmas Palms and Royal Palms…hmmmmm.

Queen Palms - Queen Palms look similar to the coconot palm (to me at least) but are a little cleaner looking, but still kinda scraggly. They grow fast though (2 - 3 ft a year), which is great for our barren property.

Royal Palms - Royal Palms are one of my favorites. They are very clean, symmetrical and neat looking palms. You see them all over the place in Puerto Rico, since they are very aesthetically pleasing.

Areca Palms - Areca Palms are also one of my favorite types of palm trees. To me, they look like a cross between a royal palm tree and bamboo, since they grow in patches. You can get 2′ Areca Palms at Home Depot for $14 and they have a decent growth rate, so we are stocking up.

Popularity: 22% [?]

While we are waiting for the landscapers to bring us our estimate and computer generated image of our landscaped yard Summer and I have been researching how we can landscape ourselves for cheaper. We already know their estimate is going to be expensive.

I mentioned that we found Bermuda Grass Seed online..that will cost us around $500 for 20,000 square feet of seed. Add topsoil, spreading the topsoil, laying the seed, spreading more topsoil and then covering it all in hay…and we are looking at about $1,000.

We found out about a tree store (what are they called again?) in Cabo Rojo that works in conjunction with the University of Mayaguez that gives away baby fruit trees. They base how many trees they will give you by the amount of land you have. The majority of the trees they give away are crazy hybrid trees like PinaMango (mango and pineapple hybrid), lemon/lime trees, orange/lemon trees etc…but they also give away orange, lemon, kanepa, mango, avocado etc.

Now, when it comes to getting the tropical look and feel that we really want to have in our front yard, that is going to require palm trees. Now, that is where the dollars really get spent. Palm trees range in cost, but they usually start around $400 (4-5ft) and go all the way up to the thousands. Summer and I really like the Queen Plams which are one of the more expensive varieties you can buy.

Here is a little info I found on the Queen Palm:

The Queen Palm is a pinnate, plumose palm, gracefully arching, with dark green, spineless fronds. The trunk is 12″ - 24″ thick. The bracts are a striking ivory with orange colored, fruit. The queen is a fast growing palm and can grow 2-3 feet per year to an ultimate height of 50-60 feet.

Queen Palms on the beach in the Caribbean
(Spell checker always corrects the horrible way I spell carribean, carribbean, carribeon…so on and so forth…do you get it right every time?)

Here is the good news:
Mark just called me from one of the houses he landscapes and said that the guy there has been growing palms, with the hopes of selling them, for a number of years now. He is going to sell us 16 three year old Queen Palms for $300. We are stoked. We are heading over there right now with cash in hand to rid this guy of his pesky palm tree garden.

It is easier to pull the trigger on this today…Summer and I went to the Mayaguez Casino last night and played both poker and black jack very successfully. Today, we will spend $300 that we didn’t have yesterday. Thanks Mayaguez Casino / Landscape Funder!

Popularity: 21% [?]

One of the reasons we built the rock planters was to help divert water away from the foundation of the house. Now that we have the planters done, we needed to consider drainage from them as well. If you don’t provide sufficient drainage from your planters they will slowly fill with water and never drain, rotting all of the roots to the plants you have in there…the soil on top will look perfect, but everything a couple inches down is drowning.

Jerry and I drilled holes before we made the rock wall and placed 1” PVC pipe in them to help evacuate any standing water that may build up in there. The next step, before we add topsoil was to add about a foot of rocks to help the water drain to the bottom and out the sides.

I ordered two yards of rock ($80) and had it delivered to the house yesterday. I had to run downtown really quick, by the time I got back the truck was in our front yard (no where near the walls) with the back of the truck up ready to dump all the rock….I honked my horn, he stopped and we dropped the rock half and half in front of both of the walls.

The temperature outside while we were shoveling these rocks was 90 degrees with a heat index of 105 degrees. Boy…it will be nice when Summer and I sitting on the front porch with Ice Tea next Summer…

At the end of the day, we had a pretty nice sunset with the moon showing off our back yard. It isn’t anything spectacular, but it’s pretty nice.

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For the past 4 weeks Puerto Rico’s rainy season has been living up to its name especially in the past two. For the entire month it has rained everyday for at least an hour or two starting at 3:00pm like clockwork. Yesterday, much like the past two weeks, the clouds rolled in earlier around 11:30 and the downpour started at 1:30ish which lasted until after 5:00pm. Keep in mind, I am not talking a San Diego style misting, it has been coming down in buckets turning our entire yard into a mud pit dissected by tiny streams flowing downhill to the left and right side of the house.

Check out the stream flowing just to the right of the cut in the yard

Once all of this crazy rain slows down a little bit, I would like to plant grass seed over the entire yard, prioritizing the flat section in front of the house. That way, we will at least have some green surrounding our front porch. In the meantime, Jerry and I are going to finish the rock planters and steps today. Tomorrow will be a ‘clean up all the extra rock and stone’ day and then it will be time for top soil.

One of the neighbors cleared out a bunch of dirt down by the quebrada and dumped it off up by the front yard…we’ll save some money and use as much as that topsoil as possible to fill the planters and put a 2”-4” layer of dirt on top of the rock / hard pack we have out front.

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