At the taller

While in the States in September, I got to thinking about the pobre Meriva, as our worker referred to our Chevy minivan after seeing the loads it carried. (I wanted to get a four-door pickup when we arrived in Uruguay; wife nixed that idea.) We got it in early 2010. Paint’s fading, windshield best replaced because of scratches from volcanic ash from Chile a few years ago. But it runs well, and the prospect of shopping for anything in Uruguay is generally dreary. So when I got back, I got some repairs done: replaced the serpentine belt in the engine at 90,000 km (supposed to have been changed at 45,000), body pained, and maybe the windshield one day soon.

Quite a few weeks after the paint job, I noticed the strip between the top of the doors and the roof was looking pretty bad.

incomplete car paint job
I’ve been parking inside. This after just a few weeks?

I took it back to the shop (taller) and showed it to the owner. He walked around the car. Whoever painted it simply skipped that area. No problem, he said. Of course, to finish the job will now take another three (Uruguay: read four) days.

While waiting in the garage, I became fascinated with the packaging of a replacement door.

replacement car door cardboard packaging

The strings aren’t added afterward. They’re an integral part of the design. They wrap around little round plastic fasteners.

cardboard package string fasteners

What an elegant (in the engineering sense) solution!

Those ceiling spiders

I have nothing against spiders. They eat lots of critters, and that’s a good thing. What’s less good is when they decide to hang out at the tall peak of our bedroom ceiling, and we end up with insect inedibles drifting toward the floor (fortunately not directly above where we sleep).

I finally decided I had struggled with our foldable ladder (which gives us access to above-stairs storage) one too many times. So off to the workshop, and after a few fits and starts, this:

homemade bug spray extender

The lever and plunger are slightly off to the side, so the spray doesn’t hit the wire. And why wire instead of string? Simple — I don’t have any string!

So now I can stand on a chair that lives a meter away, reach up, and spray with much more accuracy than when I had to lean back off the ladder against the wall. Not exactly pretty to look at, but hey, it works!

I don’t like the idea of spraying poison. My ultimate solution will be a lightweight vacuum cleaner extension, but I can’t make that from stuff I have lying around. Up north, I’d wander around Home Depot until I found something that worked. Here, I have to tell someone in a store what I’m trying to do, have them rummage around and come back with the wrong thing, try again, try again—.

 

 

The last box

Since we have to go into Montevideo, today was a beach walk day. Strong wind. Heading back, near the zoo, I saw a trash container that had apparently been blown over. I decided to right it, a bit of a challenge with one arm, since I had Benji on a leash. But I did it.

One shoe box remained on the ground. I picked it up, noticed keys, old photos and a copy of a cédula.

box with personal items

The cédula number is 698,315. I didn’t see the birthdate on the back, but seeing as my cédula number from seven years ago is over 5.8 million, and Uruguay’s population is only 3.5 million, I’d say she had a pretty long life.

 

 

Another dead light bulb

Aren’t these things supposed to last eight years? Well, we have been here a little more than eight years, and this bulb is kaput.

dead Philips compact fluorescent light bulb

To be fair, it was in my wife’s office, and heavily used. It’s also definitely more than a year or two old, whenever it was I started writing the date and source on the bulb in indelible marker as soon as I got it home.

You may recall the wretched bulbs Tienda Inglesa introduced after its American takeover.

Around the garden

Posting about the squash plants yesterday inspired me to survey the area in which I plan to plant them.

Surprise!

squash seedlings

They’re already growing there! And the more you look, the more you see.

squash seedlings

Here’s a nearby clump in the shade of one of the little orange trees.

squash seedlings

Nearby, under the pine tree, a pigeon egg met its demise in yesterday’s very strong winds. Note the epiphyte as well.

fallen pigeon egg and epiphyte

 

My squash garden

Some time ago, after preparing a calabacín (here butternut squash, not zucchini) for dinner, I took the “guts” with the seeds, threw them in some dirt in a flower pot, and said dare you to grow!

They took up the dare, and before too long I found myself having to replant 35 seedlings.

Of the five or six I planted alongside the house, only one appears to have survived.

Butternut squash seedling

And I notice we have a volunteer avocado tree there as well, which needs a better location.

avocado seedling

A few months ago, when we had avocados daily, I tried starting quite a few of the seeds. None took. So here’s one apparently spilled out of the “compost” barrel (which never gets hot enough to actually compost anything), thriving.

This is why I don’t take gardening too seriously. If things want to grow, they grow. If I want them to grow, well, maybe. Still: time to get those babies into the ground!

 

Dog walk observations

A snake. Of the dogs, only Benji paid attention. When the snake adopted what looked like a striking position, we were both yelling at him to leave it alone.

He did, and it continued on its way off the path.

Recent winds turned the sand “roads” into recording media.

We stare at them, perplexed. We did settle on one type of track (not shown here) being caused by a beetle. But these remain mysterious.

And this must (?) be from a lizard, probably 20-30 cm long.

 

The Great Backhoe Heist

We were working feverishly at our chacra (mini-farm, 14 acres with small house) in preparation for the arrival of a tenant, the second Canadian-dwelling family member of Germany-Russian neighbors who really wanted to rent. Alas, also the second Canadian-dwelling family member of Germany-Russian neighbors who cancelled his trip at the last minute. (Can you guess to whom we won’t be offering to rent in the future?)

I thought it a good idea to flush the rooftop water tank (which overflows back into the well) by letting the windmill run nonstop, but the windmill suddenly started making dinosaur noises: give me grease! I immediately thought of my Namibian friend Burkhart, who lives a kilometer or so up Ruta 11. His farm hand dealt with our windmill a year ago, when Burkhart briefly lived there. Lubricate it myself? At age 63, while fit, I’m not particularly (read: AT ALL) comfortable messing around at the top of an 8-meter windmill tower, with the disengaged fins still pivoting in the wind.

(I’ll work on that: I should be!)

I had phoned Burkhart moments before for advice about our hot water heater (giza in southern Africa), but felt that asking help with the windmill warranted a visit in person.

So I drove to his place. Heading out our dirt road, I noticed a couple guys messing around with our neighbor Jerry’s backhoe.

Burkhart wasn’t at home. Nice chat with his wife. Noticed an accident a couple hundred meters further. Cops, fire truck, some truck off the side the side of the road, or something. Headed back.

Back on our side road, passed someone driving away with Jerry’s backhoe. Behind, a pickup with flashers on. I waved at both.

Got to our place. Phoned Jerry: is this legit, someone driving away with your backhoe?

Jerry: know nothing. Heading north or south on Ruta 11? If north, maybe going to Burkhart’s place.

Back in the car. Photograph the perps.

pickup, backhoe, Uruguay

Call Jerry: they’re turning north on 11. If they proceed past Burkhart’s, I’ll go on ahead to alert traffic police that they’re stealing the backhoe.

At Burkhart’s driveway on the right, I pull off to the left and park. They pass Burkhart’s driveway. I speed on ahead to report to the police that the approaching backhoe is a stolen vehicle. I have to repeat it, perhaps because I’m not mumbling enough to be understood by a normal Urugayan. Another policía transito appears. I repeat my accusation of a theft in progress.

 

No no, he says, he’s a friend of the owner. The gringo?

And the backhoe turns off the road to help clean up the mess.

It took two hours for the clean up, Burkhart later tells me. Who’s paying the time? The fuel? The machine hours? I doubt Jerry cares, but…

….apparently it didn’t occur to them to tell the backhoe’s owner what they were doing?

Why do I even bother to pay attention?