Who Says I Can't Landscape????

We were fortunate to have the plumbing guy come by who turned out to be quite knowledgeable about a number of things and, as it turned out, he used to live here as a caretaker many moons ago. Go figure! Anyway, we ended up walking the property with him and he has some excellent suggestions for things we could do around the property. One of them involved the beautiful Sago Palms, of which we have two at la finca. The ones we have, while quite lovely, were full of fronds that bent down all the way to the ground. He explained that these should really be trimmed up to look more like trees since, when they’re overgrown, they create areas underneath them that are very attractive to roaches and other “vermin”. So I tackled the one closest to the Manager’s Cabin and we think it turned out quite nicely. He was right though - as we cut away the lower fronds and raked up all the dead leaves and other detritus from underneath, man, the roaches when scuttling away!! Maybe they’ll stay away from the cabin from now on. It was actually kind of a fun project which I enjoyed. He actually gave us another excellent tip which I’ve been using since then and would highly recommend if you’re ever doing any major trimming in the yard - spread a tarp out, put all your branches or whatever on it, and then drag them all away in one fell swoop to wherever you’re dumping them. Worked like a charm! Please excuse the sweaty, no so pretty picture of me, but I was proud of how it came out.......

It had the promise of a lovely day. I woke up to pleasant sun and still comfortable temperatures, which is already a great way to start the day around here. As usual, Jim had gotten up before and like the angel that he is, had the freshly brewed coffee waiting downstairs. All seemed well with the world until I went to change the sheets (it was laundry day). As you may have seen from the previous pictures, we have a mosquito net over our bed which is ever so tightly tucked in on all sides and corners. In fact, when we go to bed at night, it’s quite the production - we call it the “la finca limbo” as we squeeze in under the netting. At any rate, I was changing the sheets the other morning and when I pulled off the top sheet there, tucked into the corner at the bottom of the fitted sheet was a scorpion. No kidding. It was about 2 inches long which is about as much as I could notice of it before my big baby screaming started. By the time Jim responded to my screeching with the killing broom, it was gone. So now we had a scorpion somewhere upstairs that we couldn’t find……lucky us! We tore that bed apart, pulled the mattress up with no sign of the creature so all we could assume is it scuttled out one of the cracks in the wall. Sorry there isn’t a picture for this one, but I was not quite composed enough to grab the camera. So now, in addition to the hermetically sealed bed, we turn every pillow over and lift the sheet up to inspect underneath so we can ensure we don’t have any extra bedmates……hmmm……get’s me to thinking……what would I do if I really did see something under the sheet???? There I would be, crouched beneath the tent, cautiously peering under the sheet and there would be the evil intruder clicking his little evil pinchers at me. After screeching like a parakeet, I’d probably jump back trying to get away only to get tangled up in the netting which, by this time would be tightly tucked under the mattress. There I’d be, all trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey which probably please the scorpion to no end. Might have to come up with a better method of inspecting the bed now that I think about it…….

hmmm……how much were those rooms at the W?????

Look Who Came Visit.....

“Hmmm…..that chirping sure sounds close” I thought to myself as we were sitting on the couch, reading our books and relaxing. The chirping certainly blended in well with symphony of tiny tree frogs that we hear every night outside, but this one was really standing out. Our front door is a metal door with louvers that open and close in the upper half and Jim ingeniously designed a screen for the louver part so that we could catch any breezes without any……ahem……multiple legged visitors. Well, we looked at the door and sure enough, there was a little something sitting on the inside of one of the louvers, and when we got closer, sure enough, it was a little tree frog.

We took one picture of the whole door so you can get an idea of the size of the little fella - probably no bigger than a quarter. It's sitting there on the inside of the door. We were really impressed with the zoom and I think we got some great pictures of it. The other pictures are of another little frog that was sticking his head out of the overfill drain (I guess that’s what you call it) in the sink the other night. It was cute - as we tried to get close for a good pictures, it would slowly draw it’s head back, thinking, I guess, that we might hurt it or something. Anyway, he left after awhile as well. Interesting that frogs don’t bother me as much as the bugs…….although, I did get a start the other day when I was trimming some bushes and one fell out of the branch I was cutting and landed on my head!!

Thanks for keeping up with us and we love reading all your comments!

Much love to everyone.......

David and Jim

W Stands For.......WONDERFUL!

In celebration of our first month here, we felt we were due a little bit of civilization to commemorate the occasion. As we may have mentioned to some of you, the W Hotel opened an exclusive beach resort here a few months ago and we thought that would be a perfect place to go and enjoy ourselves. Well, enjoy ourselves is a HUGE understatement - this place is SPECTACULAR!! We sat in the bar area which is open to the outside with a phenomenal, unobstructed view of the ocean. The resort is on the north side of the island so you’re technically looking out on the Atlantic Ocean rather than the Caribbean with a view of the main island of Puerto Rico in one direction and a view of Vieques’ sister island, Culebra, on the other. Fortunately, the W is only about a 10 minute drive from us ( we will definitely be going back!) so we arrived about 4:30 - perfect timing. The hotel has a fairly modern feel but with lots of organic material everywhere - all kinds of wood and ceramics as well as fabrics hanging from the ceiling that gently sway in the ocean breeze. So we stayed there for a couple of hours and enjoyed some of their signature cocktails as well as appetizers. The really cool thing was as sunset approached, the cocktail waitress walked around offering complimentary cocktails to everyone in honor of the sunset - which they do every evening between 6:15 and 6:45! Gotta love that. In addition, the air conditioning - we had to remind ourselves what that was - was blowing nicely with no mosquitoes to be found. As we lounged in the chairs looking out on the ocean with the refreshing breeze surrounding us, we were sure we were growing roots right there in our chairs - and frankly, at that moment, we would have been more than content to remain there indefinitely. Alas, though, all good things must come to an end (at least temporarily) but feeling fully recharged, we were happy to head back to la finca knowing this oasis of civilization was just around the corner anytime we needed a break from the “rustic” lifestyle.

If you want to see more about the hotel, check out their website:

http://www.starwoodhotels.com/whotels/property/overview/index.html?propertyID=3170

The pictures I took were from my cell phone so I appologize for the quality. Next time, we'll have to take the camera for sure. Not sure if we would ever be inclined to pay the price to stay in one of their rooms but oh, the ambience is ever so very nice - perfect for that occasional treat!

Finally - A Day At The Beach!

As you may have guessed, it’s been quite an adjustment getting used to our duties down here and we’ve been going at it pretty hard this last month. Well, we’ve been promising ourselves some time off and we finally made it to the beach! We decided to visit a beach we haven’t been to before called “Playa Preita” which means “Secret Beach” in Spanish. This was a Thursday afternoon and although it wasn’t a complete secret, there were only a few other people on the beach. If it weren’t for the large number of mosquitoes we had to swat away the whole time, it would have been an absolutely perfect afternoon! Well, that and the fact that Jim had rigged up the perfect umbrella for shade where he used duct tape to attach an old umbrella to a broken broom stick which didn’t work out quite as well as we hoped. It looked great before we headed out, but once there the breeze was a little strong and despite our best efforts at wedging it deep in the sand, it kept blowing over. I guess umbrellas have a broad stand for a reason, right? Oh well, a valiant effort never the less on his part and hopefully we can use it somewhere else.

Since the beach day, though, the mosquitoes seem to have tapered off so we’re hopeful we won’t have to continue to douse ourselves with mosquito repellent whenever we are outside for long periods of time. We did thoroughly enjoy getting away for a few hours and as time permits, we hope to explore some of the other beaches on the island as well. In addition, there is also a historic fort in Isabel that overlooks the ocean that we want to explore as well as an art gallery there that’s supposed to be really nice.

A Trip Into Town

We took the camera along with us the other day to snap some more pictures of what we see regularly so you guys can have an idea of what our day to day routine is like. The picture taken through the windshield should give you an idea of what the roads look like on the island - very narrow, and very lush with vegetation. We’ve gotten pretty good at sharing the road with oncoming traffic but at times, it still feels like a game of chicken!

In another picture, Jim is standing in front of the produce stand, which is a big deal for the island. Once a week on Tuesdays a produce truck comes over from the island and they set up their stand where they sell pretty decent fresh fruit and vegetables. It’s definitely better quality that what we can find in the grocery store here so we try to make it there every week. Also, there is often a woman there who sells her homemade bread as well, which is mighty tasty, I must say. We haven’t made our favorite break recipe since we’ve been down here so it’s kind of nice to have her products as an option. We hope to try baking some bread soon so we’ll see how that comes out.

The orange building is the grocery store we go to called Super Discuentos Morales (super discount grocery store I guess is how you would translate). It would be considered the largest grocery store on the island with probably 6 aisles in it and a separate cooler room where they keep all the meat, veggies and frozen food. It pretty much has the basics covered but - gasp! - they don’t carry chocolate chips! How can we make chocolate chip cookies without chocolate chips??? And who allowed this place to become an American territory anyway without carrying chocolate chips in the grocery store???? Okay, being a little over dramatic but it was surprising. We ended up making do with some sweet baking chocolate, chopping it up and adding to the cookie batter. Not bad, but not quite the same either.

The other pictures are of downtown Isabel where the post office is and where we so eagerly go on a regular basis. There are two towns on the island, Isabel and Esperanza. Isabel is the slightly larger of the two located on the north side of the island and it’s where all the day to day business is carried out - banking, going to the accountant to drop off bills, the post office, etc. Esperanza is on the south side of the island, a little bit smaller but where most of the restaurants are that we like to go to. So, for an island of approximately 10,000 people, that’s about all there is - besides the beaches of course. Well, there is an historic fort that we want to visit soon as well so we’ll keep you posted on that.

A Palm Tree Grows at La Finca

Just call me Mr. Greenjeans! As you probably have seen from the pictures, there are a fair number of palm trees around the property which drop their coconuts regularly. Well, apparently it doesn’t take long once they hit the ground to start to root and sprout a tree and there were four such coconuts that had fallen right near the Manager’s Cabin at some point before we got here. Now the Manager’s Cabin already has a lot of big trees around it and really doesn’t need any more plantings so I decided to dig them up sooner rather than later and plant them elsewhere around the property. The four plants that you see here are about 2-3 feet tall but I have no idea how fast they grow. Of course, I doubt they’ll get that huge over the next two months were here, but someday, I’m sure they’ll be lovely!