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 :-).