¡Compro!

Easily the most obnoxious character who drives around blaring advertising. He buys old stuff (______ viejos compro=I buy old ________).

The last one, garafas, refers to the propane tanks that you have to buy, but which the company that sells them to you won’t buy back, even though there’s nothing unique to your tank: you swap it out for a full one—which is obviously a different tank that somebody else had to buy from a company that won’t buy it back.

The penultimate, fósforos quemados as far as I can tell, is weird—burnt matchsticks? Obviously I’m missing something here.

The first two? I’ll need some help here….

The pond comes to life!

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The pond has filled to its exit point, also its entrance. I don’t like that design. At some point I’ll get to work making a drain at the far end. But not today: after the temperature plunge of a couple days ago, and the flooding, the temperature has popped back up to 32/90° with oppressive humidity.

Our plan when we made the pond was to introduce plants to clear the water, then fish. That is, if it ever filled with water at all. The floating stuff on the right just appeared one day; turns out our neighbor planted it. Today brought another surprise, one which I don’t think has to do with him (but you never know!).

Manic summer weather in Uruguay

Uruguay temperature swing in one day

On January 31, I drove out Route 11, which most directly connects Punta del Este, summer glitterati HQ of the southern hemisphere, with Colonia, embarkation point for the quickest ferry to Buenos Aires. It marked the second biweekly turnover of holidaymakers, and the road appeared to be a river of black license plates in both directions.

The ones inbound picked poorly: they have anything but beach weather since. But yesterday it got hot, almost Paraguay-hot with humidity. When I took the top photo it seemed to me the pine tree was sweating as well. And here we are today.

A Uruguayan told me the other day that summer here used to mean temperatures in the 80s Fahrenheit. Not this summer. Not last summer.

Part of me is a little more convinced there is no normal anymore. Cambio climatico, as they say here.

Strange summer weather

Storm front, Atlántida,Uruguay

The weekend looks to be clearing up after suffocating heat yielded to suffocating heat and rain, then today’s “still-too-cold-for-shorts-and-tshirt” weather. Whereas a few days ago I shut the window next to me to keep out the heat, this morning I have it shut to keep out the cool.

I made this slightly surreal composite image a couple days ago. Minutes later the front passed overhead, doing little more than looking scary.

A gift from the alambreros

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This is the strip of our land that borders the neighbor who advised me this would be good to fence off (hence the fence on the right) to provide passage to the back fields (the red arrow indicates the back end of our property). Unfortunately, he thus advised me after I had planted fruit trees (white arrows) which have been doing not at all well in any event, given fierce sun and winds. You may recall that I was not able to fence the back of this strip (which is now fenced).

I was out there to cut the grass in this strip, when I fortunately stopped brush-hogging with the lawnmower just short of this, in a tangle of grass in a corner near the simbra.

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Though not very conspicuous in the photo, this pile of wire trimmings (here pulled from the tall grass) were inches away from being discovered by the lawnmower blade when I spotted it. My neighbor came out to say hello and complained that the alambreros always do that, but I was impressed it was all in one place, and not strewn everywhere.