California 2 Puerto Rico

We were landscaping our backyard and planted these two palm trees that will eventually be where my hammock goes. Since it’s going to be a couple of years until they are strong enough to support a hammock, I decided to plant a garden in between them for now:

I dug out the rock/dirt and replaced it with a mix of better quality soil. I ordered all sort of interesting seeds from seedsofchange.com and decided to plant spicy mesculin mix (a lettuce assortment), scallions, tigrella heirloom tomatoes, black krim heirloom tomatoes, purple bell peppers and edamame (soy beans).

48 hours after planting the seeds, I saw sprouts!

Here is the garden on day 5:

The scallions, heirloom tomatoes and purple bell peppers also have tiny sprouts, so they are growing well too. I was wondering if the heirlooms would grow since the package of seeds had all sorts of advanced directions that I ignored in favor of throwing them into the dirt and hoping that they would grow…

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The daily rain still hasn’t begun, but we have had a few great downpours in the afternoon that our plants love! Every time the rain comes, I am reminded of how slippery and muddy our unpaved driveway gets. Five out of ten times leaving the driveway when it is raining, Summer and I have to engage four-wheel drive. I don’t really mind it too much, but it sure is awkward when friends come over and can’t pull into our driveway. Instead, they are forced to carefully walk down our slippery slide of a driveway. It can’t be done without getting your shoes covered in mud (unless you are a ninja of course).

This is not our driveway getting paved, but it could be!

One of our friends down here that we play poker with (he has been forced to walk the driveway) offered to go down to city hall and talk to the mayor about paving our driveway with us. Everyone in our neighborhood understands that we haven’t been able to pave the driveway, but they are sick of our mud tracks and splatters all over the first 500 feet of the road. So, with that said, it is also an election year and everyone in our neighborhood (including me) will be voting for a Mayor in November. In essence, with the power of our vote alone, we are going to try to get the city to pave our driveway.

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I have been either my boss, or someone else’s boss for the past 5 years. When I first started my company, telling people what to do didn’t come easy to me, but the more confidence I had in my decision (based on experience in the field and the fact that at one time I did the job I hired them to do) the easier it became to observe, direct and constructively criticize peoples work. After a few years running the show, I learned that many people work better under close supervision. When I say better I mean; attention to detail, no cutting of corners, deadlines met.

Now, I am the boss on our job site (I share this responsibility with Summer) and I have gone through the same confidence gaining evolution here. I have gained experience planning rough through finish electrical work, rough in through finished plumbing work, drywall, appliances, tiling, bathroom fixtures, fans, landscaping, painting, custom closet creations, hardwood floor installation blah blah blah. Now, I am not an expert in these fields by any means, but I am now confident in how the all of those little things effect the big picture as far as building a house.

So, you would think, that I would have learned my lesson by being a foreman on the job site at this point….but I haven’t. Last week, the neighbor hired a backhoe to excavate some rock on her property. Mark and I were on our way to Home Depot, and I asked what he was going to do with the large boulders. He said he was going to dump them somewhere, so I told him he could put the large boulders on my property and I will use them around the yard. He was cool with it and Mark and I headed to Home Depot.

When we got back two hours later, the backhoe and dump truck were gone, and they had dumped about 8 yards worth of broken up cinder block, dirt, concrete and boulders in our turnaround spot at the end of the driveway.

That’s a lot of rock to move

Ha! I should have learned my lesson and stayed on site to observe and make sure the job was completed properly. So, I spent about 6 hours pulling out the big boulders and rolling them around the yard to line the driveway and our turn around spot. When I was done with that, I started shoveling the dirt into a wheel barrel for transport, and realized that it was going to take me a week to get all of the dirt/concrete/block moved. Yesterday, another neighbor was getting some excavation work done with a back hoe, so I hiked on up the hill and talked him into coming down to our house when he was done up there (for a small fee).

I’ll post some pictures of the rock-scaping when I am done moving rocks! It’s back breaking work.

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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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The tomatoes that Eddie planted in the cool garden beds that he made, are starting to get big. So Stefan and I decided it was time to make some tomato cages. Luckly(?) we have 6 big rolls of fencing left over from putting up the fence in the backyard, so we recycled one roll into tomato cages.

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When Stefan’s buddy Eddie was in town, he spent a lot of his time gardening and planting random things in our yard (thanks, Eddie!). He threw some lettuce seeds in places that he figured that they would grow and, guess what?! They did!!

I decided to make myself a midnight snack the other day and enjoy the fruits vegetables of our labor…

There is something about growing your own food that makes it taste so much better. I can’t wait to plant more yummy vegetables!

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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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So I was was reading a trashy celebrity gossip magazine today (I have to catch up when I’m off the island ;)…), and there was an article about Martha Stewart and her pet miniature donkeys…

MIniature donkeys?!? What?! Awesome!!!

I have never heard of miniature donkeys before, but that is EXACTLY what Stefan and I need! We have gone back and forth on what sort of animals/pets we want to have for the property, in order to keep the jungle growth in check. First we thought we wanted goats (or a small flock of pigmy goats), but goats eat EVERYTHING, including the young trees we have planted, gardens, palms, laundry, shoes, the house, etc. Then we thought that perhaps we should get a horse or a cow, since they are good mowers, but won’t eat our trees, but I think Stefan and I are both intimidated by having such a big and powerful animal such as a horse or cow (I was leaning more towards a cow…ha). So, how perfect would a pair of mini donkeys be?! Look at how cute the little beasts are!

Couldn’t you imagine Monkey and Cheech riding Buck Rogers (the mini donkey) around the property while Kuta is herding them all?!?

I am SO looking into how much it would be to buy and fly a pair of mini donkeys to Puerto Rico…

p.s. I’ve always wanted to be Pippy Longstockings, so I am going to carpe diam, damn it!

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