We were wrong.
Category: Atlántida
The remains of my pathetic garden
A couple of pepper plants persist, even as the sun sinks lower and lower in its daily path. I figured well, maybe I can give one of them a little more sunshine with a piece of sheet metal I had lying around. Note the ashes from the wood stove in the lower left.
We live at 34°45′ south (about the same as Raleigh, NC in the north).
Alas …
… nothing insightful today, but a pretty sunset. Over my little mango-greenhouse.
I don’t really even want to go to Brazil
And yet, I keep entering, even though I’ve never won one of their shiny red cars.
For this month, at Tienda Inglesa checkout you get a separate receipt, which you scan near the front door, at a machine that spews out coupons to fill out. I got tired of handwriting them in past drawings, so had a rubber stamp made, stamp them at home, and forget to take them the next time.
They’re giving out one trip per day, on a charter jet to Brazil to watch Uruguay play England.
Unlike certain friends, who have gone twice to Brazil and returned very disappointed, I have never been too interested in going to Brazil.
But if the lack of a shiny red car in my driveway is any indication, it’s not going to be a choice I have to make any time soon.
Maybe shouldn’t have had that last beer
No, not me. The goofball who swerved into the ditch in front of our house last night and took out the end of our little-two-brick-high wall.
It actually doesn’t bother me terribly. I have materials to repair the wall, and the guy not only lost the plastic liner to his wheel well, but, by the fact that he didn’t get stuck in the ditch, must have traveling with sufficient velocity to require, at the very least, a serious alignment.
The tow truck approaching in this picture brought a jump-start to our neighbor. I half-expected it to retreat loaded with a car whose front left wheel was hanging loose.
Anyway, in case the driver remembers the incident and returns, I left the wheel well liner there for him.
Carefully cut into five pieces.
Not sure what I was thinking
Mr. “real” Anonymous who comments here gave us a mango tree, one of two he had in a sheltered nook of his property. The other one died, not entirely surprising considering it’s a tropical plant and the Oriental Republic is not a tropical place. He and his wife have been in purge mode plant-wise after this last horrid-growing-season mucked-up-by-HAARP summer, and I agreed to take it.
I got as far as a basic structure with top and front sheathed in plastic (at times I’m not real good with math, as in buy the amount you actually need all at once). Yesterday’s strong and prolonged wind basically trashed it. Apparently the wall anchor (taco Fischer) was not adequate for the closer crosspiece. Back to the dangerous power tools.
To his credit, Mr. “real” anonymous did not claim we’d be making homemade mango chutney from our backyard a year from now, though a Uruguayan did tell me this afternoon that, though not allowed, it is quite possible to smuggle fresh mangoes in your car from Chuy, on the Brazilian border, one of the few places in Uruguay where it’s actually fun to shop, because shit is cheap … as long as you have a foreign passport to show when returning. Not for the mangos, which you’re not revealing, but the other goodies: electronics, alcoholic beverages, and such.
Lazy gardening
The garden was totally nonproductive this summer. Horrible weather.
But so what. Throw the base of green onions in some water, even without roots, and they’re off and running in a couple days.
Here they are in dirt, between “recycled” bok choy in the foreground and a broccoli stem in the background (we’ll see). We may get a few green peppers, but meanwhile the only garden success are the very hot peppers on the left, called infierno negro (black hell) where they’re sold (they go from green to black to red), and otherwise known as puta parió, which sort of translates as “son of a whore.”
Not sure why they even grow them; generally anything spicier than black pepper is anathema to the Uruguayan palate.
Balloons
In the corner of my eye I spotted a couple of balloons blowing through our unobstructed front yard.
Damn, I thought, that would have made a perfect random blog image. Too late!
Later that day:
I spot a balloon in the back yard. Behind one of our two maybe-next-year-yielding avocado trees, snuggled next to an aloe vera plant, on the other side of which a bedraggled horseradish plant from Syd and Gundy, and comfrey, with its amazing healing properties.
The next day, I spot two more, tied together, in the corner. And one inside the barbacoa. Its door had been open all day.
All went back over the wall to the neighbor’s girls.
First serious woodstove cranking of the season
I got back from the beach thinking it was probably the last time I’d be walking barefoot in the sand for a while. Though I’ve lit a couple fires, this was the first serious one, and the majority of the population of our house approved.
To tree or not to tree
Really. Please. Make up your mind.