Tag Archives: The Spare Lot

24 Hours.

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Please click on photos to enlarge.

 

Busy 24 hours. I didn’t capture it all, but these are a few glimpses of times in between doing things. The arm was a truly freakish accident and yes I was literally “skinned.” The view with
the lovely young woman in silhouette was at the International Institute between Chapala and Ajijic. I was actually trying to get a show of the hillside outside the open door, but people kept walking in front of it. So, I started clicking them and especially liked this woman’s body language. The lower garden shot shows the progress of Quetzacoatl so far and also the other end of the garden. The dog is Coco in her first shot of the day, snuggled down on the pillows near my right ear, and the anonymous head shot even I don’t understand. Cannot remember how I took the photo or exactly where but those look like the colors in my bathroom, although there is no dome in the ceiling.  Magic. If you feel the wound shot is uncalled for please let me know and I’ll remove it. It isn’t so much a call for sympathy as just amazement that I could be skinned by an everyday object like that. Okay, Yuck. I grossed you out again….(If you are wondering about the weird color of my skin, I had put makeup on my arm to cover up the bruises earlier in the day.)

Bougainvillea for Cee’s FOTD, Nov 20. 2022

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Peeking over the wall.

For Cee’s FOTD

The Vacant Lot

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The Vacant Lot

The vapors of a morning mist rise from the vacant lot.
It is a tract forgotten— our neighborhood’s biggest blot.
Each person’s in denial as to their distribution
of building rubble and garbage that’s their daily contribution

to this precarious tumble of rubble, junk and weeds
that every year grows higher and in whose jumble breeds
mosquitoes, rats and killer bees that invade my yard
making neighborly coexistence exceptionally hard.

Good fences make good neighbors I’ve found to be a myth.
To see the truth of this old adage, we must strip it to its pith.
For the stone wall that borders it, alas, has been infested
by a million angry worker bees whose well-being’s invested

in invading all their neighbors, driving dogs and human folks
back into their houses to avoid their neighbors’ pokes.
A precarious situation, at best, dear reader, for,
there is a dilemma present at its core.

If we want to eat their honey must we put up with their stings?
Must we coincide with every danger nature brings?
For the ending of the story, if you care, you now must wait.
For I will recite it at a later date.

Today’s prompt words are vapor, precarious, myth, tract, denial and vacant lot.

Cultivate Your Own Garden (CBWC Photos and Quotes)

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‘One Must Cultivate One’s Own Garden’…Voltaire

In 1759, Voltaire wrote his most famous novel, Candide, in just three days. It was a satire on the hopes that were pinned to science and technology, which instead of improving the world, he was sure would destroy it by giving more power to tyrants. Better, he said in his parting message, to till our own gardens and leave the rest of the world alone. What an appropriate message that has turned out to be.

I took Voltaire’s advice, and this is the new garden I created during the first year of Covid, transforming an overgrown lot next door full of twelve-foot high castor bean plants, garbage and castoff boulders and leftover construction supplies from surrounding houses into what is a garden in progress. This is the photo I took yesterday through a space in the fence that protects it from further dumping.

Below are “before” and “during” photos. Click to increase size of photos:

But, forgive me, Cee, I just have to show it in color as well!!!! More to come.

For CBWC: Photos and Quotes

Lower Garden: FOTD Oct 16, 2021

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Pampas Grass and Bougainvillea
Lot looking Southeast
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Serpent’s Tail

Please click on photos to enlarge and read captions.

My extra lot that I’m developing down below is coming along. It’s my biggest collage to date!

For Cee’s FOTD

Bougainvillea: FOTD Mar 17, 2021

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Although I posted this photo earlier in a gallery about the possibility that they’ll make me tear down this brick tool shed built by Jose, I love this shot and have to post it here as well.

For Cee’s FOTD

FOTD Feb 22, 2021: State of the Lot

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Here are photos of the current state of the little park I am building in the lot below my house. I just purchased the carved stone snake head and will form the body out of the small bushes that are currently laid out behind it. As the bushes grow, the body will flesh out more to scale. I’ll have a stone tail sculpted later after my bank account recovers from past projects. I bought one more sculpture as well, but you just see the uncarved back of it in the photo.  The four Dr. Seuss trees will be planted elsewhere in the lot, not in the positions where they currently are. Bit by bit, the neighborhood weed forest and dumping ground is turning into a thing of beauty. Stonework by Jose. Planting by Pasiano.  Financing and art direction by Judy.

Pasiano’s Treasure

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I saw this 8-inch-wide stone sitting up on the bench under the arbor in the lot I’m developing into a little park. This afternoon when Pasiano and Jose were planting the truckload of plants and trees and cacti that were delivered yesterday, I went down to trim a century plant and pick up a few months’ trash that they’ve left strewn around the site, and Pasiano pointed the stone out to me, saying he had found it on my lot. Jose was teasing him about it and Pasiano was making a joke of it, too, calling it “his art” but he was really pleased when I was enthusiastic about it and he gave it to me. I was curious about whether it was a piece of petrified wood or an unusual  geological specimen, but when I decided to look closer tonight, I realized that the rings are all on the surface of the rock.  I wish I had looked closer at the place where it is (sadly) broken in two before I glued it back together, as that would give the best view of a cross-section, but the rings do come to the edge in a couple of places and they don’t seem to go any farther into the rock than the surface, so I’m pretty sure it is a rock painting.

Now I feel like I need to ask him if he wants to keep it. Hope he sincerely says no!  I think it is beautiful, and will give it a place of honor somewhere, and perhaps try to find out more about it. If anyone has any insight into what it may me, I’d appreciate your comments.  Even guesses are welcome!

 

 

On Mexican Time

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On Mexican Time

2:59 PM Damn. You would not believe what a day this has been.

Today was Pasiano’s day to come clean and refill the hot tub and pool and to do the regular gardening. On Wednesday he’ll be very busy as they are due to deliver a truckload of plants to put in the recently cleared-out spare lot next door, where they finished putting the fence up two days ago. The first plants we put in were molested by passing cows who stopped by for a light lunch and so planting was delayed until the fence was up.  Today was also Yolanda’s day to come clean and Oscar’s day to come walk the dogs and give them both baths.

I woke up very early this morning so was working on my third blog of the day when Alberto the plumber called to say he had the part to fix the pool filter pump and that he’d be coming to do that. He arrived and Pasiano, Oscar and Yolanda left. Got a call at noon, after Pasiano left, that although they were supposed to deliver the plants tomorrow at 5 so Pasiano could plant them on Wednesday, they were instead delivering  today at 1!! I tried to call Pasiano as he has the only keys to the padlocks for the gates  to the lot and his phones didn’t answer. Called three times and finally got him and he said the padlocks weren’t on the gates. So, about 1:05, the plumber tells me there is someone at the gate. I go out, don’t see anyone and figure they are down in the lot. The street is full of cars but I don’t see a truck! It turns out they are having an open house across the street. So I get down to the lot and no truck. I trudge back up the hill and find it isn’t the plants that have arrived, but rather a truck with my new stove and dishwasher in it–a month early! I desperately try to call Yolanda to see if she’s sure she wants both my old stove, which works fine except for the absence of two dial handles which I’ve been trying to replace for the past year with no luck and the dishwasher, which doesn’t work, but no one answers. Either line. Her son Juan Pablo’s line doesn’t answer either. Then the delivery people tell me they don’t take away the old appliances anyway and having brought the boxed appliances in and depositing them in the kitchen, they depart. I have a kitchen island I had built in the middle of my kitchen which luckily, I had put on wheels. It is scooted over to in front of the cabinets and sink and the rest of the kitchen is filled with appliances!

In the meantime, the plants arrive and I go back down the hill to show them where to put them. They start downloading and I run up to the house to call the store where I bought the appliances, if, since the appliances have been delivered a month early,  they have, as promised, arranged for someone to come install them, and they say no!! Luckily, Alberto the plumber comes up from having installed the pump and I ask if he knows how to install the stove and dishwasher. By then the appliance delivery guys have left and he says yes, but he’ll need help lifting the stove out. I help him do that but wonder how we are going to get it up the steps to the garage.

The doorbell rings. It is the plant guys who have put all the plants into the spare lot and are ready to be paid. I ask the guy they’ve hired to help if he will help Alberto carry the dishwasher up the steps to the garage, which he does. I tip him and they leave. Alberto installs the new stove and gets it going, then learns they haven’t delivered a hose with the dishwasher. We also discover ten years of cockroach poop behind the dishwasher. He puts the dishwasher out on the terraza and I try calling Yolanda for the sixth time and she answers! Yes, they want both appliances and will come to get them tonight. Alberto departs to drive to Jocotepec to get a new hose.

I go to sit in front of the fan and take my mask off as I’m now soaking wet and my glasses are totally fogged over from all that running up and down the hill and breathing hot air that leaked out around the top of the mask right up to inside my glasses. What a day!! All mistimed appearances that somehow meshed. If Alberto hadn’t been here I would have had no one to install the appliances. If the plant guys hadn’t come a day early, there would have been no one to help him carry the stove up the stairs to the garage, but as things turned out, everything jelled. And that, my dears, is a perfect description of Mexico for you. Things that seem pandemonium just seem to work out. Not in the time you’d planned for them to work out and certainly not in the way you’d planned for them to turn out, but nonetheless, they turn out!

P.S. Yolanda just called to say they will come for the appliances tomorrow. “But the dishwasher is standing out on the terrace. What if it rains?” I ask. “It will be fine. The dishwasher will be fine,” she answers. And she is probably right.

One reason why I needed a new stove. Another is that unbeknownst to me, my old stove didn’t have a thermostat! The thermostat dials are just an approximation–and this is the norm in Mexico. My new stove has a real thermostat.
The old dishwasher under the new dishwasher box, awaiting Yolanda’s family to cart it away.
The new dishwasher, waiting for its hose.
Wish I knew someone who needed packing boxes.
My old stove, Yolanda’s new stove.
My new stove. Evidently those blue lights stay on all the time. Hope they drive mosquitos away!
Don’t worry. That island is on wheels so once the dishwasher is installed will be moved away from the stove so the oven door will open.
This seemed like a good many more plants before they were delivered. Some are hiding behind. But, it’s a big lot to fill.