An inquisitive old fart with a camera
Our two avocado trees are growing beautifully. Unfortunately, after six+ years they show no interest in producing fruit. A few months ago I chopped the tops off them to see if that would help.
Good news, though: we have generous friends 😉
Just the thing to accompany a Sunday omelet and homemade bread.
I’ve seen the hoof prints for a long time (and watched our Shi-Tzu face-plant in a couple), and finally the question is answered … sort of. Two gaucho guys who come from the east.
I saw a large plastic tub today in a ferretería (hardware store), something unusual, something very similar to what I used in Mexico to bring home vegetable market castoffs for composting. And I have a source in our local féria. With the “strong” dollar, its price of 380 pesos means thirteen and a half bucks, which seemed quite reasonable.
But its decoration raises questions for the curious mind. What does a gray plastic tub have to do with Valentine’s Day? What could it? What do a gray plastic tub and Valentine’s Day have to do with raspberries, strawberries, and butterflies? Butterflies fertilizing plants, birds and bees, love and sex? Do butterflies fertilize plants (sorry, not up for another tangential intertoobz search adventure right now)?
Help me here ….
Just a couple of photos that have accumulated.
…for dogs. Not a common thing in Uruguay.
Far more common, though: not quite being on top of this “internet” thing.
Try it for yourself: doggiespa.net.
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.