A new fence to restructure our plots and possibly the last landscaping push of the year

Sometime this week Omar the "fencer" will be back in order to start on the new task: incorporating the old-new plot into our corner plot, and separating them from the house and the pool. In other words, we will now have two "units" of land, consisting of two parcels each (one built, one unbuilt), separated by a fence (and an internal little gate) and landscaped as two separate properties.

After much investment and effort spent on acquiring adjacent plots of land in addition to the ones the house and the pool sit on, we finally came to realize that the additional land does not quite contribute to making our property more valuable, and that in a functional way, it doesn't really make sense either, as the house is turned away from the road and those two other plots. OK, I like to walk the perimeter, I like the fact that I can throw the ball to Oso and not hit fence or end up at the neighbors, but I feel that maybe there is some sort of self-indulgence in this.

Of course, we always justified it with the notion of our "plan B," that is, setting up some kind of B&B there. But right now we feel that it's more of a plan C, or that we are a bit far from Plan B right now, so we want to have the option of selling either the unbuilt lots, or the house. For the right price, of course. Which probably means we will continue to landscape and improve our place for a few years to come :-)

The separation, besides making the properties more market friendly, have the additional advantage of providing us with a half-acre "dog pen" for when we have company. As it is right now, we basically can't enjoy the garden with company because the dogs get so excited that they jump on everyone non-stop for about 10 minutes, resulting in soiled or even torn clothes, some disgusted friends, and even some friends knocked to the ground by so many loving canines. They do settle down after a few minutes, but the initial onslaught can be quite traumatic for our guests and embarrassing and stressful for us.

Another advantage of separating the house from the other parcels is that I have a new fence along which to do further landscaping! Any excuse is good for spending money at the nursery. But seriously though, I'm undertaking a major landscaping push, as we move to plant all along the new fence, inside and outside, on our neighbors lots. There are a couple of truckloads of topsoil on order already, and the list of shrubs will be prepared this week. Initially we're looking at "lots more of the same," taking into account our experience over the past year with what has and hasn't worked out.

Tamarix, agapanthus, yellow broom, oleanders, melaleuca, photinia, dodonea, purple sugarcane, phormium, and native varieties of trees such as canelon, guava, araza and inga, these are the things that have done well and prospered in the harsh combination of dreadful soils, salt air and punishing winds that define our yard. The jury is still out on the tibouchinas. All 45 of these bushes are currently in a state of grey, shrivelled, apparent death, after the last frost, but everyone tells me they will "come back".

In addition to the current "restructuring," recently we also added a fifth plot, across the street, basically an arbitrage buy because it was offered at half the going rate around here, and the two bids I had made for neighboring plots had been turned down. The new-new one went on sale immediately upon execution of the purchase agreement. If our past experience is any indication, it could be sold by this time next year. From what we've seen, everything eventually sells within a 12 to 18 month period. Again, we're in no rush, and neither are any of the sellers in our area, apparently, so we'll wait it out until we reach our price.

But also, it's good to control a bit more of the neighborhood because we immediately have the land cleaned up, which automatically improves our own surroundings, and by increasing the price we insure that buyers coming in will build relative to the higher cost, rather than the shacks they used to build around here when land was too cheap.

Do we qualify for a Discovery Channel special?

Lots of excitement at one end of the yard drew me close to check out what was going on.

It was Shakshuka!

Well, actually, first it was Zeytin, but the dufus lost her prey, which was then claimed by Shakshuka, who did some amazing acrobatics with the poor field mouse, while the dogs watched in .

Harvest!

That's it, yes, a wheelbarrowfull of leeks. At 13 pesos per leek at the supermarket, that's equivalent to more or less $28 in hard currency harvested right out of our yard, yessir!

They are now residing in our fridge and freezer, chopped, sliced, diced, creamed and souped. For dinner tonight, capeletti with creamed leeks and spinach.

We left a few thin ones still in the ground, but just a dozen or so.

My husband's love child

 

I've known for a while, the sneaking of leftovers was the giveaway, and then he just came out and confessed. There is another puppy, he told me, six months ago. Where did they meet? At our warehouse in Cerro Pelado. Now I finally get to see him, and hear his name: Roberto. We'll just have to keep the news from Lunes, who knows what she's capable of.

Visitors

 

We've become such crazy dog people that now we have friends come over not with human children, but with their dogs... Sadie was an exemplary guest, ours should learn from her and Mike should be proud.

The whales are here

I always knew I had "powers". Yesterday I woke up talking about a dream involving a kindergarden for whales, all riding around in little tricycles. "They start out having legs and then they lose them as they grow," I explained to my husband, who agreed with my Mom´s later diagnostic of "She´s gonna end up locked up".

Anyhow, I woke up again this morning wondering "Where are the whales? They´re late!"

The season started officially two weeks ago but last year they had appeared uncharacteristically early, so we were already missing them. Anyway, yesterday´s sighting was in Jose Ignacio, further east from us... Look forward to seeing them at our beach.

A perfect birthday weekend

Time with my celebrity dogs, time in the yard, a visit to the nursery, planting in the vegetable garden, dinner at a friends' yet-to-be opened restaurant and lunch with all siblings, Mom and various sisters in law at my brother's in Montevideo. All in all, I had quite a full and pleasant birthday weekend.

View of Vida Devagar, in Playa Verde

In the gift department, the first was the surprise of stumbling on a picture of Oso, Collie, Tulu and Lunes in the NYT. I had submitted the picture a few days before, but after seeing they were up to 16,400 contributed pictures, I had absolutely no expectation of running into our brood.

The second gift of the day, of a more material nature, was a "nursery voucher" from my Mom, giving me another unnecessary excuse to visit my friends at Proverde, resulting in an additional green gift, this time from them, in the form of a crate with seedlings of red and white cabbage, cauliflower and broccoli, already planted and hopefully happy in their new home. Plants, the gift that keeps on giving...


For my "gift certificate" I chose 15 poligala bushes, to add some softer foliage and color to the area nearest to the road, where now there's just some formios and some ornamental grass that I plan to move over a bit to the left, in order to bunch them together and make room for the poligalas, while making them more of a single-looking bush, rather than separately identifyable plants. Of course, while I was there I decided to add a few more oleanders (we never have enough, it would seem) and formios to existing patches, with the same philosophy of "safety in numbers" against the brutal winds here.

Back home I ran out back to plant the new winter veggie babies. We've resumed weeding and clearing the vegetable patch, which is now about 50% clean and planted in various stages of growth, and 50% a filthy jungle.

On Saturday night we went to Vida Devagar, our friends Alex and Cecilia's restaurant/bar in the making, in Playa Verde, next door practically to Terra Nostra (they who refused to seat us on Mother's Day) and the sadly closed Carumbe... I believe that independently of the merits of Alex's cooking and the charm of the place, they can develop a business just from aggrieved guests rejected by Terra Nostra, who apparently are doing too well to care about serving regular customers. In any case, the Japanese salad of cucumber and carrot with sesame seeds was delicious (I skipped the calamari dish) as were the home-made ravioli with mushroom sauce.

At the risk of exploding the next day we had amazing ricotta tortelini alla Carusso, a typical Uruguayan sauce of cream, ham and mushrooms. Followed by strudel from former Hamburgo, now panaderia Del Museo.

In a carbo-fed stupor, we arrived home early in the evening and treated ourselves to a double feature, a satisfying Clive Owen vehicle with the most fantastic photography and interiors, where he destroys the Guggenheim (The International), and a contrived Mexican auteur indie film with typical great cast, confusing editing and a depressing aftertaste: "Burning Flame" or something like that.