An inquisitive old fart with a camera
Beyond the corner, the builders buried about 50 meters of culvert, inaccessible except from either end, eliminating the drainage ditch. I could have told them this was a bad idea. A few days later, I didn’t need to. Simply demonstrates that the private sector can match the incompetence of the public sector.
I always enjoy looking at this house. In five years, I’ve seen people in it only a few times. Curupay, the name, presumably refers to the wood of the column (which needs some maintenance).
Sensibly, they’re not using it as firewood.
It has been 2-1/2 year since the trash containers appeared. And less than two years since the one on our corner was burned to the ground (for the first time).
The spray paint on this one has mostly disappeared, showing the UV protection it offered the otherwise now-faded plastic.
I don’t know if this resulted from rough handling or solar ultraviolet. Probably a combo. It’s not the only one, by a long shot.
I sometimes wonder why I don’t do more homeowner projects, and today witnessed with awe the efficiency with which a highly-recommended plumber (not this one) repaired one of the results of my hanging some plastic gutter (a gift) and downspout to restrict growth of wet stuff on a wall near the barbacoa. (Note how well it worked: not.)
In drilling holes for the “Tacos Fischer,” the local name for plastic wall anchors, I managed to discover the hot water pipe for the barbacoa (which was a parillera before we enclosed it). To clarify: 1) a parillera (open) or barbacoa (closed) is where you gather with family on Sundays to eat meat meat meat, slowly slowly cooked over coals. Unless you don’t have family here, in which case you make it into a sort-of workshop; 2) discovering a hot water pipe does not constitute a happy result of trying to anchor screws in walls.
The plumber worked with surprising efficiency. Instead of tink-tink-tink with a hammer and chisel, he brought a mini-jackhammer that pulverized the wall in seconds to expose …
… not just the plastic water pipes (you can see the hole), but — see that orange a few centimeters above? That’s the electrical feed to the barbacoa. 220 volts. Ouch.
OK, I maybe be clumsy. But I’m lucky.
The whole repair — plumber and his son, and equal amount of time spent inside cleaning and rebuilding a valve that fed this line — cost UYP 600, or a bit over USD 25.
And, so typical here, they’re gentle and pleasant people, concluding the transaction with a handshake.
Someone did a nice job of “tiling” a wading-pool-sized puddle that has developed.
… “that tree is going to fall one of these days.”
It’s the time of the yellow trees. I don’t know what kind they are, but for their own reason they all turn yellow for a while in the middle of winter.
To a North American or European, it might seem a bit bizarre that a woman stopping at a kiosk would make no effort to pull to the side of the road, and instead simply “park” in the middle of the road. And it’s not that there was no traffic — we were stuck for a few minutes waiting to cross the road.
I would probably have to explain to a Uruguayan what’s wrong with this picture from my standpoint.
Es lo que hay.
It’s classic palm-to-the-forehead “the work how she is done in Uruguay” moment. You’ll recall we just went through a poorly thought-out repair on the corner nearest us, and seeing as elections are coming up, it was quickly fixed.
Here’s the main thoroughfare, the bus route, a few blocks down the same street. You’ll notice in the foreground a new strip of concrete, so people turning off won’t hit potholes immediately. Instead, they’ll go one meter before hitting potholes. Eventually, but inevitably.
You’ll notice on the other side that they made the concrete patch lower than anything surrounding it, so that it collects rainwater. As you can also see, the puddle extends into the dirt section of the road, which means the potholes will start forming with the first vehicle to drive through.
We’ll see if they’re as quick to fix this. Your guess?
.
Our local comadreja (possum; translates as weasel) has wrought havoc in my little 1/3 barrel compost pile. Like most things garden I do these days (I had a wonderful garden pre-internet), it’s a half-assed affair, without enough mass to heat up and, on rainy days like today, getting entirely too wet.
So I decided to transfer its contents into a full-size plastic barrel with drainage holes at the bottom, in which I have tried unsuccessfully several times to grow potatoes (to be fair, once in the campo where the alambreros (fence guys) upended it, dumping the contents, so they could stand on it.
However, once again I have grown a rich crop of something unplanned: a dense, wriggling mass of worms. I don’t know how they got in there, but obviously they find it a good environment. In case you’re not a gardener, worms = good. When we moved here, we could not find a single worm on the property. We looked. Now we have an abundance.
Garden update: I have several of these type things in the garden now. This plant (predictably) didn’t make it. I did harvest and dry some insanely hot little orange peppers from here a week ago. The first year here, we had volunteer tomato plants everywhere; the second year squash. And the first summer in the country we had an abundant supply from plants I didn’t plant.
Maybe this summer will be the one I actually get my gardening act together. Just need to take a quick look at my Google+ account first ….