An inquisitive old fart with a camera
This was our “test” pond two years ago. We didn’t know if it would fill with water or not.
Indeed, it did. So this year we enlarged it. And no rain came. And it went to almost bone dry a few weeks ago. Fortunately, we had never put any fish in it.
To get a feel for the difference in size, note that the earlier version ends on the left partly past the front of the neighbor’s ugly barn.
Now to go near Tienda Inglesa, trim some willow branches, and try again to get trees started.
I was disappointed how long it was taking to make compost — basically, three buckets’ worth in five years. So I started reading about worm composting, found a design that looked good, figured I’d order some worms — without remembering something.
So I built a little worm farm.
I also built my first hydroponic unit.
I started making compost tea.
And I discovered that my first attempt to sprout sunflower seeds wasn’t unsuccessful after all. They loved the non-composting compost barrel!
This is one of ten NTF hydroponic greenhouses at the Verdeagua hydroponic farm outside Montevideo. Every day they harvest 1,500 heads of lettuce. Their entire output goes to Tienda Inglesa in Uruguay.
You can bet I will be boring you soon with my own foray into hydroponics. Well, my first since 1985 when I had a single hydroponic marijuana plant in my apartment in West Germany 😉
It’s truly an inspiring business that has been in operation for fifteen years.
It was still that temperature approaching 5:00 when I walked the dog. As soon as we hit the beach, the temperature plummeted in moments. 87.8°F to 71.6°F.
We had the Veranillo (little summer) of San Juan earlier, and expect the Tormenta de Santa Rita around in late August / early September. Typically brief warm spells result in moisture condensing on every surface. We have none right now, and we have had almost 10cm / ~4″ of rain in the last five days.
Walking home in front of the Zoológica (Atlántida’s little zoo), the parking attendant gives me handouts:
Addiction treatment. Save your life or that of someone who needs it.
A chance for the ultimate in hair restoration. USD 160. 100% limp? Something must be lost in translation. Regardless, I’ll pass.
Stonework, plus cleaning, fill, ponds — which reminds me our tajamar in the campo, bone dry two weeks ago, is more than half full after the recent rain. More on the tajamar here, here, here, and here. Anyway, no more for now. Thanks anyway.
Funeral services. More personal • more humane • cheaper. Than what?
Parcels and freight, moving. Daily, door to door. Now this might come in handy if someone in Montevideo wants to buy the freezer we have for sale.
Might.
This is from my latest sale on mercadolibre.com.uy. A portable disk drive.The buyer sent me money through the ubiquitous Abitab. There would have been no charge had he used a Banco Republica and transferred it to my account. I then dropped the package at Tiempost for delivery to his local branch in Pocitos (Montevideo neighborhood). He can track the package online.
My last sale was yesterday. A radar detector. The buyer came to my house. Although he lives nearby, he lives on the other side of the peaje (toll booth), so he might not have been so eager … except that yesterday was a national strike, and the peaje was wide open.
The sale before that was to a guy who lived near the airport. a GPS unit. I told him I had to take a friend to a flight in a few days. He didn’t mind waiting. I phoned him from outside the airport and five minutes later he was there, and the transaction done.
It’s not Paypal and the USPS, but it’s possible.
The irony, of course, is that the possessive apostrophe is not used in Spanish. Except in business names in Uruguay, apparently. But two, and backwards? Reminds me of 9s.
Doesn’t play well to my ear, even (or especially) knowing (which I didn’t) its Urban Dictionary definition: an obnoxiously enthusiastic US Marine. Another definition: Un motard, ou motocycliste, est un conducteur de motocyclette. Les conducteurs de side-car, de trike et les pilotes de compétition peuvent également porter ce nom. The funny thing about that definition is that I got to the end of the second sentence before I realized it was in French. Up until then it’s just a couple of letter-changes away from Spanish.
After seeing the gull, I saved a little fish from dinner to take to it the next day. Didn’t. But the gull was still there, so I drove back, after dark, with little pieces of fish on a piece of wood, and some water. It jerked its head towards what I offered a couple times, but it was too dark to see if it was eating or not.
Yesterday I took a little canned tuna. The piece of wood was gone, but I found a piece of a plastic flowerpot, put the tuna on it, and edged it toward the bird … who didn’t seem to like the idea of that plastic thing so close to it.
So today:
that piece of plastic. No sign of the little depression the bird had made. No tuna, but there wouldn’t be; there are every day many dogs on the beach. No bird, no sign of bird. Anywhere.
Gone.