Onwards and upwards

Ficus repens -- creeping soon up a wall near us.

Maybe I´ve been sidetracked with the landscaping for a while, but it´s high time we do finish this house!

With that in mind, today I called Hugo, a local realtor-cum-general contractor who I´m hoping will give me a reasonable estimate for making a large deck next to the pool. We have a lot of slate tiles left over from the patio downstairs, and rather than doing a wooden deck, I want to continue with the same slate, even if I need to buy a whole bunch more. I´m aiming for 1.3 times the size of the pool, more or less, or about 600 square feet of slate surface.

This mini-project, in addition to giving the place a more finished, neater look, will free up sprinklers to concentrate on the heavily planted borders of the lot. The sprinkler thing is a growing issue, the more land, the more I plant, the more sprinklers I need, and we´ve arrived at a point where for the next extension we need a new irrigation computer and maybe a new well, or we are risking overusing the pump (if it has to be pumping 12 hours a night) or we have to figure out something else.

That something else may be a combination of less lawn (helped by the coming deck) and possibly a rainwater collection system, seeing that we have lots of roof surface. Rainwater would also allow us to use a drip irrigation system (now we are prevented from doing so by the heavy composition of our well water, which would clog the drip holes). So I have an appointment with Antonio, a neighbor from Punta Negra who as chance would have it stopped by to offer solar and irrigation systems last week.

The next round of improvements will involve enclosing the downstairs bbq area, which will give us a further 645 square feet of usable indoor space. That one is pricey because it´s all windows, sliding doors, etc., and possibly some cabinetry. We desperately need some storage space for garden stuff, tools, dog stuff, a proper "mud room", etc., and it would be nice to be able to use the bbq downstairs year round, regardless of wind conditions and without a pack of dogs walking all over us.

Lastly, we are planning big changes to the outside appearance of the house, involving dark charcoal paint for the wood cladding, and covering the brick/mortar cube side with a green creeper. This will contrast with all the white windowframes and the white retaining wall downstairs.

We have chosen the ficus repens, and already planted them all around the three sides, and were told that once they start growing they go up very fast. It´s a perennial, with a tiny, flat leaf. For now, they look like little crappy mounds next to the wall. But I can picture the super chic dark grey and dark green, framed by sea and sky blues and the surrounding, lighter green landscape, and I get very excited. The paint job will have to wait for spring cash-flows, but we will probably have the pool deck started soon.


One King´s Lane´s homepage image is sort of the color scheme, although we are planning a darker grey. We even have the matching dog!

Also, lest I forget, we need to fence in the new lot. I am coming to the conclusion that we will divide our land into two lots, with the one the house is on and the one the pool is sited on becoming one lot, and the other two next to the road joined as another lot, more or less half an acre each. I will run a fence dividing them, leaving a gate between them for now, and will install a gate on the far side of the road. This way, if I decide to sell either the house or the other lot they will already be landscaped separately.

Acacia bayleyana rubra

And talking of the devil, with Barbi in Turkey doing the BarbiTour2009, I couldn´t help but run to the nursery the second he left. We have identified a new species that is supposed to do well in our place, and that I find very beautiful: the acacia bayleyana rubra, a shrub-tree with greyish purplish foliage and huge yellow flowers. The rubra refers to the purple color of the new leaves. It´s hardy, we see it all over tough spots of Punta del Este, so we will give it a try.


To anyone who knows the coast of Maldonado, Uruguay, and knows anything about plants, it´s shocking to hear that my pitosporums have "underperformed," to put it nicely. So we´re addressing this with reverse psychology, adding some more pitosporum, to see if the ones we have are so lackluster because we did not plant enough of them to provide them with mutual support from the winds. That´s the theory now.

Pitosporum

Lastly, we have a drainage problem that we will address with plants. We have several drainage problems, but one area of water pooling is particularly ideal for an island of cattails, and knowing that a block away towards the sea there´s a whole corner covered in them, I´m 100% sure they will prosper. One less place for the dogs to wallow in mud.


And what about our landgrab? I made a half-hearted effort today to acquire one more adjacent quarter acre lot. I called the mean old lady, who at this point has warmed up so much she almost sounds happy to hear from me (this being my 10th call in a year and a half), and made an offer she flat out refused. It sounded like I hit on the right price, but she was not into giving me 18 months to finish paying the full amount. What in Uruguay is called "facilidades" or short-term vendor financing, which is the way most property is sold.

Then I called Hugo and told him this, and asked him to pass on the same offer to the guy who owns another lot back to back with our newest one. It´s not nearly as good for us, but if I get my terms, we´ll get it, and have frontage on three streets. Frankly, if I don´t commit to forced savings like this, the money just vanishes into thin air. So if it´s a no from my adjacent neighbors, I will look for someting else, something where the seller doesn´t know how much I want the property, preferrably :-)

One place my money is vanishing into is 20x200.com, the addictive "cool art for the masses" website I got tipped about by my friend Victoria. The premise is every week there is one, or several, launches of limited edition prints by up-and-coming artists, with the smaller 8x10 sizes going for $20. It's so of the moment that in a matter of two weeks one artist whose prints I bought did a New Yorker cover, and another whose print I've been staring at for weeks (Alex MacLean) was used as an illustration in the New York Times. But the bottom line is that the curator chooses lots of things I really like.

So this week I stepped up and ordered my first $50 print, after several $20 ones. I better buy some land soon or I can see this taking a dangerous turn.