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.