Ode to March

Ready, steady...



...Go!

It's easy to say "my favorite month is March" but even when I say that, in September, for example, I don't quite remember the full wonderfulness of March in Uruguay.

For one thing, you know it's March because THE WIND SUDDENLY STOPPED! The stillness sort of jolts you. The stillness and the beautiful blue skies, the star-filled night skies, the suddenly quiet streets, etc.

On a recent Saturday morning we were bathing at "our" beach as I like to call it, in clear, quiet green waters, looking up and down the coast at a completely deserted bay of approx 10 kilometers of gorgeous beaches. Not even the ever present fishermen. Which was ironic, because the fish were literally jumping right off the shore. Huge fish, in chase of small fish, all jumping like crazy. The sea is definitely at its best in March, clear, quiet and no jellyfish like you can get anywhere between December and February, and warmed up by a whole summer of sunlight. As my husband remarked, almost like the Mediterranean.

To complete the bucolic weekend we attended the regatta at El Puertito, where the spectacle of dozens of children seriously preparing their equipment for the race, while their parents lounged on beach chairs on the grass brought me back to childhood and the thrill of sports competition (track and field-hockey, back in the day) something I hadn't relived in quite a long time.

El Puertito is a private, very upscale development with its own small harbor, so while the parents of the competitors sat on the hills surrounding the harbor in their beach chairs in a sort of laid back tailgate party style, I enjoyed the airconditioned comfort and catering offered at the Club House by Paul and Natasha, the Swiss/Cuban developers.

Regatta held this past weekend at El Puertito, Laguna del Sauce, Ruta 12, view from the Club House

Frankly, for the price of a waterfront condo in Punta del Este, to have a one acre lot with a gorgeous huge house built on this place with incredible lake and landscape views, is a no brainer for me. The club house by the water is where you can send the husband after a fight, or where you can retire to read or work in peace while a contractor is installing something with a power drill (had a lot of that today).

Sailboats coming back on the second day of the regatta, seen from Club House

My mother, who at this point can only conceive of condo-in-town living says that's for a different stage in life (not hers), and that I want to "put her away," although I'm double more away than she would be off Punta Ballena on Ruta 12, that's for sure.


But let's stop coveting and get back to what we have. At home we've been enjoying the beach more than we did all summer long. And nothing like the swim in the ocean followed by an outdoor shower to wash off the sand and a dip into the solar-heated pool, which is considerably warmer than the sea, all before going to work. That's what I call privilege.
Friend of Rafa, Rafa, Leticia, Barbi, Aunt Myrtha, friends of Aunt Myrtha

Rafa and Leticia

Natasha, Mom Mirtha, Paul, Patricia and Omar

Some last minute planting before the winter arrives...

OK, finally I got it, it´s the tibouchina, or glory plant, the one whose name I could not remember... they grow up to 8 feet, or 2.5 meters tall, so great for a hedge. We planted 15 of them along the fence behind the palm trees, so if and when they grow and become full bushes, they will be very visible from the pool and from the bedroom windows.

The tibouchina leaf.

Another new addition in this latest mini-planting binge was the photinia, which has a lustrous leaf that comes out burgundy and then turns green. We planted 5 on a trial basis, to see how it does here, but have room for another 10 or 15 of them if they work out. Also a tallish shrub. The are placed alongside the tamarix, which is fluffier and more fuzzy in general look, so a good contrast in foliage, while a ton sur ton look in terms of colors, with the pink blooms that appear all summer in the tamarix.

Photinia

It appears that burgundy, pink and purple are emerging as the color palette in my garden, both for foliage as well as flowers. I started out with just white flowers (all my dozens of oleanders are white) and pink (tamarix) and then some agapanthus that were supposed to be all white turned out to have some purple ones among them.

We later added some purple sugar cane which has a beautiful deep and dark color, as well as other shrubs whose names I never learn in the same tones, and the beautiful achira, a burgundy-leafed, deep orange flowered canna lily that came as a gift in tiny size and has thrived at the entrance next to the strelitzia. Yesterday we decided to repeat the purple cane along the corner of the bedroom walls that face the sea and the road, to soften that façade.

The purple sugarcane. As long as it has water, it grows like crazy, fast, tall and bushy in just weeks. You chop them off almost to the ground in winter and they come back again with a vengeance.

The canna lily, I want to get more of these...

In yesterday´s plantation we also put in a few little pine trees (5 of them) of the Japanese black pine (thunbergii) variety, which has proven to do just fine in our yard. We had two already, and they did great throughout the drought and wind-storms.

Thunbergii pines

Last but not least, on the "plaza" side, a public area next to the road I am aggressively landscaping, we added three araucaria excelsa, replacing one of the other variety that was dead. The excelsa has been a good performer already in our yard, better than the augustiforme which is not looking so hot (one dead, two ugly).

We also planted two different grasses to soften the view a bit. We chose the penisettum alopecuroides and the paspalum, which have contrasting color and general shape (as grasses go). One is bushier, rounder and grayer (paspalum) and the alopecuroides is yellower, and more upright. We planted 7 of each...

Penisettum alopecuroides

Paspalum

Now the thing I can´t wait for is pruning season. I want to chop off a third of all the poplars, and do serious pruning on all the shrubbery, so we can have thicker, stronger plants and trees next spring.

The Arrancopelito Pet Adoption Agency

The March batch is here!

After adopting two unwanted dogs and one unwanted one-eyed kitten (which has since recovered the previously non-functioning eye), placing 4 puppies and their mother, and helping place another non-related puppy, all in the space of a couple of months, I feel I need to name this enterprise.


Especially since the new batch is in! They were at an undisclosed location for some time, but the Mom ended up succumbing to the charm of the cave at my neighbor´s yard, where the other Mom and puppies had found safety and happiness just weeks ago.


They growl and bark at me from the safety of their cave...

So we have 6 new beige puppies of approx 3 weeks now, which look more like otters than like dogs, but of course in a super adorable puppy way...

For this week only we are offering them for free! Click here if you want to reserve your cute little bundle of joy. Actually, I´m waiting for them to grow a bit with the mom, because they all look too young albeit very healthy and plump, unlike the previous batch that was more uneven.




Collie and Zeytin

Back at the ranch it would be all peace and harmony were it not for the psycho Lunes, whose anxiety pills have not kicked in yet (two weeks to go before the effects start to show). The dynamics are very cute, with Tulu in love with the cat, Collie in love with Oso who observes her like a bothersome bug, and both kitten and puppy playing and sleeping together.

Barbi keeps making no secret of his predilection for "Oso divino" as he calls him... causing more jealousy and "unacceptable behavior" from poor deranged Lunes...

Collie unsuccessfully tries to catch Oso´s attention, while Oso only has eyes for the ball

On the vegetal kingdom front, a recent visit to the nearby Proverde nursery prompted by a visit to Arrancopelito from the nursery owner yielded a new planting campaign. We´re being moderate this time, what with the globaleconomiccrisis and all that, and my husband resenting the fact that virtually all his salary goes to landscaping and plants, but we´re adding new trees to the "plaza" area and the "sidewalk" outside the fence (3 araucarias and 5 pine trees), as well as some new bushes (photinia) with cool leaves that are bright red when they just come out.

We´re also planting a whole bunch of bushes against the fence behind the pool, whose name escapes me right now, but which have a very fuzzy oval, thick leave with a little purple flower. We´re going out on a limb and planting 15 of those together, to see if we make a good, visible patch of them. I´ve seen them in very wind-exposed places such as my brother´s in La Paloma, and the Hernán Taiana restaurant half a block from the sea in Montoya, so they should have a chance here. They will replace the two dead kiwi plants, which have a very similar leaf but with more reddish tones and which definitely can´t stand the winds.

Next to the house on the bedroom façade facing the ocean we´re planting 7 sugarcane bushes, which are gorgeously purple, lush and which require only water to grow huge. They did great outside the fence next to the entrance, and I want to have lots more of them. Love the rustling sound they make also. And the gratification of having something that grows super fast.

Lastly we´re planting a couple of different grasses on the "plaza" section, to soften the abundance of trees and formios which look a bit too severe. I am definitely not into the minimalist garden, and neither do I want a classic garden. I want lushness, exhuberance and big statements, large groupings of the same variety together, rather than single specimens of each plant (old ladies´ garden we call them) and I want to see lots of texture and pattern and greenery in general, very soon.

I am at the point where, despite lots more planting required, I can begin to edit what we already have. So out goes the lavender, which in addition to not working here (it´s been withering and dying since we planted them) feels out of place style-wise. We´re putting more white oleanders and rosemary where the lavender was, just expanding the existing groups to replace the outgoing bushes.

Now all I have to do is keep the cows away from my property and pretty soon I´ll have a real garden.

The 2009 season in coastal Uruguay

Laguna Garzon, photo courtesy of Sibel the Tourist

Every conversation I have with people who are not directly involved in tourism or real-estate in the coastal region of Uruguay starts with a "So, was the season terribly bad?" or a variation thereof. It's become a bit tiresome to explain that no, for many businesses it was in fact the best ever in recorded history. Imagine the incredulous expression in people's faces, but anyone who stopped to look around can easily have noticed.

Ironically, many people appeared to want to see confirmation of their dark expectations. After spending 45 minutes traversing Punta del Este from one side of the peninsula to the other in mid January, normally a 5 minute drive, I would arrive at a dinner party to hear some fool declare "Punta del Este is empty! Very few cars this year..." It was hard to contain the chuckle.

In reality, the beach parking lots were packed solid even in previously considered "solitary" beaches, and the traffic jams driving into Punta del Este in the peak weeks started several miles before than in previous seasons. One particularly crazy night, while trying to reach the Peninsula, I ended up in El Jaguel, akin to saying you're going from Midtown to Wall Street on the West side and you end up in Queens, as traffic cops diverted the flow ever farther away from Punta del Este.

According to official figures, the numbers of tourist arrivals into Uruguay were flat from the year before (which was an excellent season) but the difference this year came from the heavy presence of prosperous Uruguayans (I'm laughing as I write this: prosperous Uruguayans, a modifier one can use about once in a generation), who came out en masse every weekend, in addition to those vacationing for longer terms. In the last week of January for my friends and relatives it was virtually impossible to find a house or a room anywhere between Solis and Jose Ignacio, and the same apparently happened in La Paloma, La Pedrera and further east.

"Ahhh, but the season now is sooo short, it lasts just a couple of weeks..." quip the undeterred naysayers. Well, you see, not really. Rather, it's quite the opposite. The month of December is now full blown high season, and February is a lot busier than it used to be (witness La Barra and points east, which use to board up in late January, and have continued to thrive through the end of February). Then in March we get all the adults with no school-age children, many "foreigners," as we call those who are not from Argentina or Brazil, but rather from Europe and the U.S. So the season is quite longer now, despite the fact that families from the region take shorter 2-week or one month holidays, rather than settling in for the entire summer as they did in the 70s.

"So this must have been a 'budget' vacation, in linewith the global melt-down, right?" Well, not really. From our immediate sources we know that it was a record season for anyone rightly positioned, but official figures are pretty eloquent: expenditure grew 40% in dollar terms over 2007. And no dollar devaluation this season to blame for the increase.

"OK, that may be, but surely many real-estate developments must have collapsed and sales must have frozen, causing a free-fall in the prices of houses, condos and land" is the next comment in this by now cliched conversation. Surprise surprise, wrong again! Sales not only continued apace throughout the summer (a time when transactions don't usually take place) but prices actually rose. We continue to see people looking to buy, some even looking for multiple purchases. The developers who did not raise their prices left them unchanged. And guess what, although there is one project that has been crashing ever since its launch 2 years ago (it appears to have more lives than a cat) over the last 3 months we have seen many projects break ground, and proceed with astounding speed.

So, no, not a terrible season in all. Now let's hope we can continue to refute naysayers this time around next year.

Barrancas de Arachania

The view from our back yard at Barrancas de Arachania


It should be obvious by now that I like middle-of-nowhere places that happen to be relatively close to somewhere. I like being surrounded by greenery, within earshot of crashing waves and with some measure of sea views and wild life. I guess this preference runs in the family, because my elder brother Jorge and family have found a spot that fits all those requirements and then some, in Arachania, department of Rocha. In fact, they got there way ahead of me, about 20 years ago or so, when they purchased the first of several properties there.

"La Rosada," the first one

Arrancopelito and Barrancas de Arachania, the holiday compound they have created over there, are about 100 kilometers apart, but the similarities are manifold, starting with the "never heard of it before" name.

Barrancas de Arachania is a stone's throw away from a beach of similar characteristics to ours, from where you can see both La Pedrera and La Paloma. There is a vast expanse of green area to the East, much like in our place, which in the case of Arachania is an oceanfront ranch that has not yet succumbed to subdivision, extending all the way to La Pedrera. Both places are in fact at the end of a coastal road. Once you reach Barrancas de Arachania coming from La Paloma, the coastal lane turns inland, same as at our place with the road coming from Piriapolis. Which insures, at least for the foreseeable future, that our views of the sea won't include significant vehicular traffic.

Another house in the compound

OK, there are a few differences, mainly that where we have a single house, my brother has eight. But the common, key feature is an intangible, the sense of absolute peace and relaxation provided by these special settings. That, and my brother's and his family and friends' company is why we try to spend at least a weekend every year in whichever house they happen to be camping at. Because they have built quite the successful rental business there, every year we get to stay in a different house available at the time of our visit. We are usually one of 800 houseguests (typically including my nephews' friends, my brother's friends, their friends' children and their friends' childrens' friends).

View of the latest house, from our front porch

This time the gang was staying at the newest house, which, straddling a little brook, surrounded by lush vegetation that made me green with envy, feels more South-East Asia than Southern Atlantic. But we were given our own cabin, a tiny one bedroom we had never stayed in before, the smallest of the compound. The minute sky-blue house is perched on a narrow tongue of land that falls off several meters on both sides, with fantastic views of the fields ending in the ocean on one side, and of the gardens on the other. The deck chair out back was perfect for watching the sun rise over the sea.

And then I became Michael Jackson

What a busy summer it has been. Arrancopelito was fully booked with houseguests since the last week of December until Carnaval, and it felt great to have the guest room occupied all that time.

First we had an early December overnight visit by Sara and the Croquette (a.k.a. Jessie, her curly dog), and then we had Ines and Juan Pablo, from Montevideo, followed by Sibel from Germany, Ben and Tom, from New York, and most recently Ines again, and Gustavo, Nikki and their daughter Luz, Uruguayan friends visiting from Barcelona.

Throughout the parched summer I developed tendinitis on my thumb from watering the yard with a hose to keep everything alive, although I'm much better now. Now the drought has abated, everything looks as green as what I imagine Ireland to look like, but one of the consequences of the drought has not yet let up, and that's the snake epidemic.

After a two year drought, coupled with huge fires in the area, the crucera, a venomous snake that was already abundant in the area, has benefited by the disappearance of her natural predator, the water/garden snakes which eat their eggs. Added to their greater numbers, the fires destroyed half their habitat in our area, so they "came down the hills" in droves, and in the months of December, January and February every house in our area had at least one visit, if not more. We responded by clearing more of the empty lots around our property, but that was not enough apparently.

During Sibel's stay, she was unfortunate enough to arrive one night we were out to find a one meter long crucera coiled on the entrance steps. Thanks to the warning barks from Lunes, Sibel did not get bit, and she heroically managed to collect all three dogs and keep them from harm's way until the snake was killed. I was hoping that would be the end of the snake events, seeing as the rain has been copious and there are lots of frogs to eat everywhere, but a week ago we freaked out when we woke up and saw half of Lunes' head swollen to balloon size. From the window upstairs I could tell it was a snake bite, so we raced to the vet in Maldonado. Her neck had already swollen as well, and she couldn't even bark, so I was terrified she would choke on me before we got to the vet, but all was fine, Dr. Sienra had the antidote (which nobody does in Uruguay for some reason) and she is now back to her feisty self.

But for a long time I have been told by many people that cats are the only defense against snakes. I didn't want to get cats because I feared they would hunt the birds, but now that I'm used to Lunes eating several birds a day, it's not such a strong consideration anymore, and the snake deterrent has become a priority. So yesterday finally we got our first one, Zeytin, and are about to get a couple more as soon as Zeytin is absorbed into the family and does not require any more medication.



Zeytin is very small and came in bad general health and with an eye infection, but she's making progress daily, and has not been eaten by Lunes yet, so things are looking good. Tulu licks her until she's soaked, Lunes hits her with her snout and makes a huge effort not to eat her, and Oso just follows her around.


The problem is that when we went to Sienra's to pick up Zeytin the cat, I just followed the sound of a shrieking puppy all the way to the back yard, where we found a ball of black and white fur going berserk. We picked it up, and by the time I turned around to my husband, Dr. Sienra was standing behind us asking "You like?" in his most persuasive tone... I passed her on to Barbi's arms, and that was it, sold! Collie is a 6-week old female Border Collie, who apparently was bought as a gift for a boy who refused to take care of it, and so we got her instead. I had been resisting many puppies offered to me and many strays for a long time, but this time Barbi, who always plays the ogre, was right there with me and could not say no himself...


It's hard to convey how perplexed our dogs were. We had been away for two days (we never go anywhere) and we returned with two new critters, one of them a cat, which they had never seen before. Collie established her presence forcefully right away, barks, growls and tries to play with all of them, so she's fully adapted from the start. I guess by showing no weakness she kind of scares them, they don't really know what to make of her.

The cat will take a more gradual approach, or else she will become a snack for Lunes.

Unsurprisingly, my mother reminded me that I am becoming one of those crazy old ladies who accumulate pets. My elder brother has offered to start looking for goats, sheep and llamas for me, and it doesn't sound like a bad idea at all. My own menagerie...