Rejas redux

Anticipating our first delivery of firewood (a ton of red eucalyptus), I took a couple of the rejas to our local metal guy Daniel. A few spot welds later, I can stack firewood (leña) without fear of blocking the only electrical outlet (tres en linea) in the carport – vast improvement over the rickety wooden frame I used previously.

Whenever the firewood gets around to arriving, that is.

In Spanish, esperar means to wait, and to expect, and also to hope. To a northern North American, that seems hopelessly imprecise. To someone in Uruguay who ordered firewood two days ago for delivery today, its level of precision seems about right.

LATER THAT SAME DAY 😉

Eucalyptus colorado, Uruguay

Rejas.

We bought our house, unfinished, from a couple in Buenos Aires who built it for a dozen years, finally splitting before they had a chance to live in it. Because of their distance (3 hours) and big-city mindset, they had the whole place swathed in rejas – bars, even going so far as to have two locks on every door.

The discordance of the bars with the width of the custom-made wooden window panes gnaws at me aesthetically.

Worse (or better), many houses in our neighborhood have identical windows – and no rejas. Do we need them at all?

Envisioning a solar convection heater for our chilly upstairs bathroom, I borrowed a grinder yesterday and removed the bars from one bathroom window. And then the other. And then two over non-opening windows high in our stairwell. Each is held in place by a tack weld on the head of four lag bolts. Lots of noise and sparks, but in fact relatively little cutting before the bolt will unscrew.

I’m tempted to keep going – the kitchen (above) would be so much nicer without the prison feel. But isn’t it foolish to remove a security feature?

Or is it foolish to live with prison bars because of another person’s fears?

Monster Squash

Last year we had volunteer (we didn’t plant them) tomato plants, growing everywhere, even outside the living room window.

This year it’s zapallos, large green squash that turn yellow. Two or three plants occupy large swaths of the yard, and one growing on the neighboring lot goes 15 meters in several directions.

This morning I saw some beachgoers stop as Dad pointed to something in the leaves. I went out and discovered this specimen, actually visible from the street, though I would never have spotted it.

monstersquash