Our dog life

Winter bbq dinner in the fireplace. Barbi is becoming quite the accomplished "asador"

Good thing now we have plants to care for and worry about, because since April, our life has centered around the dogs.

Now, if you have dogs, eventually your life brings you to ponder the issue of poop collection. I never had a dog in my years as an apartment dweller, not so much because of the cruelty of having the dog locked up all day, but because of the prospect of going out twice a day to collect steaming poop with a plastic bag.

Oso´s favorite passtime, getting all muddied up

Puddle fun


And yet now, despite the generous play-pen we have provided for Lunes, Tulu and Oso, we find that in no time it becomes a minefield to be walked at one´s own risk. So Barbi has taken up the chore of collecting the growing production on a once-a-week schedule, something to look forward to on his single day off from work. Although I do take them out for a long walk once a day, and they do their thing in the fields around the house, it turns out that our yield is up to 15 kgs, or 30 pounds a week of the stuff. Hence, Barbi has developed a device that I have named CacaCaddy (patent pending).

Beach fun

All inventions are incremental improvements on previous inventions, some argue. Well, our CacaCaddy takes the market cart to the other end of the eating process. Just change liners, and you go from food gathering to poop disposal... We are accepting orders. 19.95 with two sets of liners, spade and broome extra. Excellent for people with back problems, eliminates the need to bend down.

The CacaCaddy in service

Let the games begin...

About 25% of the stuff is on the ground here...

In a race against the clock, the weather and my almost exhausted patience, this Monday we finally saw the launch of the planting drive at Arrancopelito.

Sunday evening I freaked when Barbi said "Good news! Monday it will rain but the rest of the week will be fine." Well, not good news if we didn't get the topsoil in time, for example... Well, we did get the truckload of topsoil first thing in the morning, arriving minutes before the truck with the first load of trees and shrubs, and an "advance" team from the landscaper guy who was going to be doing the planting.

Our baby araucarias...

There was a bit of disappointment there, the guy, William, seemed to be shuttling back and forth all day between some other site and my place, the guys he left behind almost all day confessed they hated plants, they only liked lawns and they were actually in charge of tending to a private golf course. In short, they said they knew nothing about planting, but would make holes wherever we indicated and would place the plants in their planting location.

Since there are about 200 specimens to place (we ordered some more yesterday), my Mom decided to stay all day directing the proceedings, or I should say, helping me do the landscape design.

Then, at about 2pm, the pro team arrived, and proceeded to set a large number of plants in the ground before departing at 4 pm. A couple hours later all hell broke loose, but not before William showed up for the last time, and working in the dark, covered (as I had asked repeatedly) the topsoil mound and brought in the palm trees that the dogs were already chewing on because they were lying on the ground, still unplanted.

As seen from the road

Today it was a bit painful to watch all the baby trees and shrubs being pounded by the evil southern winds.

The waiting game

Well, the shrubs and trees were all chosen, the guys to plant them hired, the deposit money paid, and for a couple of weeks already we have been waiting on the weather.

The problem is that we need at least one truckload of topsoil (the soil here is clay, meaning it hardens like marble when dry, and it does not allow water to go in or drain out, so all plantings require plenty of soil substitution in order to live and prosper. But because it´s been raining every 3 days, topsoil at the topsoilery never dries out and the suppliers refuse to deliver it.

It´s soooo anticlimactic, I thought after such a push on my part, it would all have been planted by now. It's also exhausting, because wherever I go I don't just travel but rather my eyes and mind register EVERY single shrub and tree planted EVERYWHERE along our way. I may be chatting with my husband but actually I'm computing number of shrubs in a certain house, or distance between them, or size relative to distance from the sea, or age of a particular palm tree, etc. I hope once I have planted my own I will be able switch off the greenery calculator, because it's really draining...

Well, I´ve waited many years, so I guess I will survive a couple more days. Right now the "polar weather" as they say in the news, has turned windy, but the rain yesterday was not that intense, so who knows, maybe this week :-) For polar it's not that bad, I even managed my walk to the beach with the "kids" who really love the windy weather.

On other news, it was my birthday this week and Barbi gave me the most gorgeous painting by some Polish artist. I have to find out more details about this painting, but I fell in love with it at first sight at Whitebox, the new shop in La Barra owned by Stan the Pole and Theresa the Hong Konger a few months ago. I actually loved so many things there that I instructed Barbi to use it as a source of all gifts to me. But I had forgotten and so was very pleasantly surprised.

I don't know what it is but dem Pollacks seem to be everywhere around now. And they're not like Lech Walessa, but on the contrary, so urbane, charming, sophisticated, etc., that they make us look like a bunch of peasants. It was both hilarious and depressing at the same time when last week our other new Polish friends Tad and Lydia declared Uruguay to be "Like Poland 20 years ago." I always knew we had a "behind the iron curtain elan" but this statement is still quite a shocker for us.

The same day we had Nadine and Peter, the dogophiles, over, and gracious Nadine complimented me on the dogs. She claims I do well with them. But then yesterday my best friend, a Uruguayan, was shocked at how we spoil our dogs and "treat them like humans" which is something I never intended to do. I don't agree with her pronouncement :-).