What a great trip. It was awesome having Eddie and his new family down at the house for the past couple of weeks. They flew down to watch the house and enjoy the heat of the Caribbean (as opposed to the chill of Rhode Islane).
While here, the house turned into a home. Their 2 month old baby girl helped the place smell like baby powder and numerous ointments…the oven was kicking it at all times of the day…water was constantly boiling for either coffee, oatmeal or tea. Someone was cooking breakfast or cutting fruit. When the kitchen of a house has life, it feels like a home.
Eddie worked his ass off on our yard also. He planted new seed, helped set up a watering system, helped me organize where certain plants and trees should go and helped me understand the process of growing plants just a little bit more.
Last week Stefan and I went to Montoso Gardens in Maricao, Puerto Rico, where the have all sorts of interesting exotic plants. Like lemons as big as your head! Well, as big as my head at least…
David Brunner was nice enough to show us around and educate us on various exotic plants that they have on their farm. We placed a fairly large order and the plants should be arriving shortly. Here is what we will soon have planted on our property:
2 Areca Catechu palms 6′-7′
2 Macarther palms 7gal., 5′-6′
1 Triangle palm 3gal.
1 Red Sealing Wax palm 4′-5′
2 Grafted Rambutan trees
1 Grafted Abiu
2 Purple Grumichama 1gal
1 French Peanut 1gal
1 Cinnamon tree 1gal
1 Cannonball tree
1 Grafted Maprang
1 Noni
1 Mangosteen
1 Yellow Jaboticaba
1 Spanish Tamarind
1 Aemygdiana rhizome
1 Tahitian Ginger 3gal
2 White Torch Ginger 1gal
4 Red Torch rhizomes
4 Pink Torch rhizomes
2 Cacao Trees 1 gal
1 Ae Ae Banana 3′-4′ division
1 Peanut Butter Fruit 2gal
3 Pink Ginger 3 gal
3 Red Ginger 3 gal
3 Polynesian Princess Ginger 3gal
6 White Bird of Paradise
4 Orange Bird of Paradise
3 Mexican Gold Heliconia 1gal
3 Oriole Orange Heliconia 1gal
3 Iris (red) heliconia 1gal
Most of the plants above you may have never hear of, but that is because Montoso farms specializes in exotic fruit trees from around the world. If you’re looking for the standard fruit trees (mango, orange, grapefruit, etc), you won’t find those at Montoso farms. They are far more interested in rarer varieties of fruit, which is fine my me…I can’t wait to have our property overgrown with interesting plants and fruits!
Summer and I are still working hard on the house everyday. It is funny, we moved down to Puerto Rico for a more relaxing tropical lifestyle and I am busier than I have ever been in my entire life. Ha, I guess that is just how it goes when you build a house.
Now that we have the beautiful hardwood floors in, it is really time to do something about the driveway. At the moment, it is just scraped dirt with some hard rock, but when it rains, it pretty much turns into a slip and slide. If you are parked down by the house and a good rain comes through, you aren’t leaving unless you have 4 wheel drive. For Example:
The mud and dirt from the driveway get tracked into the house by the dogs, us and our friends that come over. I mop in the morning and by the time Summer wakes up she doesn’t even notice that I cleaned the floor.
Now, we have plenty of options as far as driveway surfaces go, but I think our bank account is going to dictate what we are going to be able to do to resolve the problem quickly. Concrete is just too expensive right now, and we will be able to cover up a gravel driveway down the line with concrete when we can afford to pull the trigger on such an expensive project (maybe when we get the pool and cabana in the back yard :-).
Here is the basic layout for the driveway. Nothing fancy at all.
Does anyone have any experience with gravel driveways out there? The only thing I remember about them as a kid is they suck to walk on with bare feet. I am looking for a little deeper intellectual insight than that though. How often will we need to pour in new gravel? Do we need to build a form for the driveway or do we just dump the rocks and push them around? Will they drain well or will they all erode down the hill? Should we have a big roller come in and compress them down?
Do you guys have any insight on gravel driveways in Puerto Rico or elsewhere?
I recently got a hot tip from The Kruses on where to get some great plants, here in Puerto Rico. Karina recommended Montoso Gardens, which is in Maricao:
Montoso Gardens has all sorts of great exotic fruit trees, flowers, nut trees, spices, palms and more. They even have an online store and will ship plants for very reasonable prices. Stefan and I are going to head over to Montoso Gardens sometime this week, so we’ll let you know what we end up with :)!
Jerry did the work on the downstairs shower pan and also the shower pan for the outside shower. They both came out pretty darn good! Here is a picture of the outside shower and the new shower pan:
It may not look that impressive to you, but here is what the shower looked like in May :
The shower pan is one of the most important parts to building a shower and it’s probably the hardest to get right (Luckly, Jerry is a master with concrete). Essentually you need to slightly slope/angle the floor so that the drain is at the lowest point. This is so that all the water flows towards the drain and doesn’t pool and sit stagnant in your shower. Gotta love gravity!
I also planted a foxtail palm and some purple flowery plants around the shower, for that “Yes, I am showering in the jungle” feeling :D.
I’ve been playing the roll of gardener for the past week or two, since the guys are concentrating on the inside of the house. As I’ve been watering, weeding and planting, (I’ll leave the pica pica to Stefan ;)…) I’ve been getting ideas for how we are going to lay out the garden(s) and outside living areas. There is a HUGE mango tree near the back of the house that I want to put a swing in and I got the idea that I wanted to clear out an area under the tree for a table and chairs as well. So, I raked out under the tree, pulled the weeds and was prepping to dig out a decent sized tree to transplant into the front yard. I grabbed the pickaxe and round nose shovel and went to work.
On my first swing of the pickaxe, I hit the BIGGEST centipede I have ever seen. Lucky for me, I chopped it in half, otherwise I could have been in big trouble. I went up to the house and grabbed my camera, but the pictures came out too dark, so I photoshopped this reenactment for you…
Behold! Summer the giant centipede slayer!!!
Seriously, though, the centipede I came across under the mango tree was pretty close in size to the one pictured above. Scary! It makes me a little nervous having the dogs running around, being as a centipede that size could easily kill a dog. I’m going to have to fashion some sort of centipede-proof doggy boots for Kuta and Monkey…
Here is a video I took when I was spying on Stefan jackhammering the cement footings in the backyard:
We are reducing the size of the footings because we are going to pour a cement slab under the porch and the formerly big square footings would have been the perfect ankle-biting height. You can thank us next time you are stumbling around under our back porch and you don’t smash your foot into them.
Although Stefan did put in his time with the jackhammer, I can’t give him all the credit. Jerry did most of the work and my dad took his turn playing with the jackhammer too. If jackhammering looks fun to you, we know where to rent one for $60 a day. Come on down to Puerto Rico and we can find something for you to jackhammer!
Summer and I got back from San Juan last night. We had a great time and I would definitely call it a successful mission!
When we got back, the first thing I noticed at the house was how much the grass grew. It is really starting to look good. We’ll re-seed again in two or three weeks after we cut it for the first time. Check it out:
Just 3 days after Stefan planted the grass seed, the grass “peach fuzz” was visible. These pictures were taken less then a week after the seed was planted:
Looks like I’m going to need to save up to get Stefan a riding lawn mower for Christmas…Go, grass, go!
The plants are coming!
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