An inquisitive old fart with a camera
Migración, despachantes de aduana, trying to find quality household goods and tools, anything vehicular, no-show plumbers – electricians – albeñiles – jardineros, looking at yet another house with miniscule rooms and mold. Just like climbing a tree. A certain type of tree.
I have been asked more than once by a certain person. With no expectation of figs, I haven’t paid much attention to our tree in the country. Low and behold, leaves all gone, and any ripe figs destroyed by the parrots.
After five years, our backyard lemon tree has sprung to life.
But not without mysteries. For example, this fruit …
.. which appears to have the letter P on it. But before you crank up the synapses to explain this one, recall that your task is more difficult: because Uruguay: is that really a P or is it a 9?
On my second try, success at getting willow cuttings to root. Off to the campo I go to plant them….
… “that tree is going to fall one of these days.”
It’s the time of the yellow trees. I don’t know what kind they are, but for their own reason they all turn yellow for a while in the middle of winter.
You might recall that I planted fruit trees in the wrong place on our chacra. I finally got around to transplanting them: pathetically poor root structure in the impermeable soil that turns from incredibly sticky mud in the winter to something resembling concrete in the summer.
I planted one each on the two piles left from the installation of the septic system, complete with wind protection with fencing and shade cloth I had on hand.
The only other shade cloth I had had stripes, so now we have this jaunty little display in our back yard. But this is by far the wettest year we’ve had here, and particularly bad for mold in houses and plants in the ground. Will they fare better in their new location?
We’ll see soon enough.
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.
The ombú tree is very cool.
Really. How awesome would it be to grow up with this in your yard?