Dog prints, human prints, bird prints. And shadows.
Sand plant
Tag: plants
Cacti
A friend generously brought me a cactus shortly after we moved here. One of my son’s friends figured out what kind of cactus it was, and stole a chunk. I never learned anything more about that. The whole top part you see is what has regrown in six years since he cut a chunk off.
Alas, a recent windstorm broke two of the three branches — but not the new one!
I gave away the tip of one branch. The other I planted. The bright green indicates new growth.
And the broken branches are busy regenerating as well.
Alas, two bits don’t seem to be faring very well.
Maybe I’ll have to find another use for them?
An early Christmas present
Years ago, a fellow expat told me about a long clamp he bought at Tienda Inglesa, very handy for making clean plywood cuts with a circular saw. I went to Tienda Inglesa, and — reminiscent of trying to find a ”special” item that you didn’t buy the first time you saw it at Costco — there were none. And there have been none. Until yesterday!
So it’s an early Christmas present. Time to try again to make a cabinet!
In other news, a bloom:
I think we’ve had these plants at least three years. This is a first.
Clean up: public vs private
Paul asked about the end state ot the aloe vera harvesting I posted yesterday.
The private workers actually left their work area very clean. Of course, the aesthetic appeal of the plants has been greatly reduced, but they’ll grow back.
Much of the waste, I expect, they left around the base of the plants, but that will return nutrients to the soil. On the ground in front is a piece similar to what they were packing into crates.
Meanwhile, near Syd’s place, the public workers actually did come back, and did remove the rest of the brush pile, and the other one around the corner!
But all the trash carefully removed from the brush pile remains in its own pile on the ground, just meters from an empty trash container. Because “not their department,” no doubt.
Harvesting aloe
Aloe (pronounced as a Canadian might say, aloe, eh) vera grows in abundance here. Today I saw another first in seven years: its harvest.
Turns out they sell it to a laboratory that turns it into a skin product. For exactly what application I couldn’t catch. Uruguayan Spanish is not generally spoken in a crisp, clear way, and the guy at the truck, while friendly, was a little hard to understand. Anyway, they get USD 0.68 per kilo. Sounds like farmers grow fields of it. It wasn’t clear the connection between these guys and this little stand of aloe, apparently on private property in town, right off the main highway, the Ruta Interbalnearia.
Aloe is all kinds of good for your skin and more. Nice plant to have in the backyard, which we do. Easily planted, like so many things here: lop off a chunk of plant and stick it in the ground.
Bok Choy
This is what happens when you stick the bottom of a head of bok choy / pak choi in dirt and let it go. It didn’t make another head, but we did harvest quite a few leaves before it bolted. The bees love those flowers. Next: collect seeds ….
Those are heads of lettuce either side of it, from seedlings courtesy of our friends Don and Jan.
Creating restaurant ambiance: plants
Adding a house plant to your beach-side restaurant helps create a special ambiance.
You did spot it, right?
(Thanks, Mike!)
Cleaning up the garden
We threw an old, very heavy, very hard squash into one of the overgrown raised beds long ago. I went to remove it today, only to discover it’s light as a a feather and …
… it lives!
Willows!
On my second try, success at getting willow cuttings to root. Off to the campo I go to plant them….
Cashews
No wonder cashews cost a bit — each of these fruits has one at the end. I picked on and ate the fruit, very tasty. But apparently they can only be eaten (or juiced) fresh. So in most cases the whole fruit gets wasted when the nut is harvested.