it continues…

Jonna — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 04:44:01 +0000

day 3, pool empty & planters growing

We are at the end of day 10 of construction, it is taking longer than I hoped. Well, of course it is. I’d hoped it would be a couple days and then everyone would leave and I’d get to start picking plants. Um… not. I started out taking lots of pics every day, then I realized that day 6 did not look much different than day 7 and I just took one pic a day. They are doing a lot, there are delays waiting for the concrete, or the electrician or the plumber but work has been steady. I can’t believe the long days, the workers get here before 8am, if I open the door at 7:30 or 7:45, they are outside waiting. They don’t leave until 5pm and they don’t take much of a lunch.

day 5, 3 planters built and 1 more to go

I’m sure most of you know by now that I’ve never been considered a “morning person” so did you notice that line up there about opening the door before 8am? For like, 10 days and counting? Mimi and I have started splitting the morning detail so every morning one of us gets to sleep in until 9am or so. Bleh! I don’t know what to do with myself at 8am, I wander around in a daze, I can’t even make coffee without spilling everything I touch. Plus, the animals are getting crazy from being locked up for a couple weeks, Mimi and I are too because we feel that one of us should be here all day. Then there is the fine dust everywhere, some of it is from the renovation being done on the house next door but most of it is ours. I can not imagine how horrible it would be to live in a house through an entire remodel, my hat is off to those of you who have done it.

day 7, planters built and electric and water lines installed.

They put in the first concrete patio section today. I would say ‘poured’ the first section but really, they carried it from the dirt where it was mixed in a 5 gal bucket and dumped it in the forms. I’m hoping they will finish the concrete this week, then the bamboo wall extension can start. Also, then we can put water back in the pool. Warmth has returned to Mérida, it was about 100F today, not bad inside the house but it would be better with a pool.

day 10, bender boards and half pipe for bull nose on bench in place

I’m a bit anxious about the garden design. This is a blank slate, I need to have a plan of some sort or a mental image of the layers and colors I want to plant. It’s a bit intimidating right now. I’ve considered getting a landscape designer but then I feel like a wuss. It is the part I’ve been looking forward to for a year, I can do this.

end of day 10, one section of concrete is in.

I’ve had to change many of my original plans for planting. The planter bed by the pool hit solid rock a couple feet down. I shouldn’t be surprised, it took weeks to jackhammer out the pool and pond. I had the option of getting the jackhammer back and making it as deep as I wanted. I don’t want to spend that much money for one thing and I just couldn’t take it for another.

except those 3 holes, it's solid rock and the holes are only a foot or so deep.

It doesn’t drain well because of the rock so I asked them to break a hole from the bottom of the planter into the well next to it so water will drain directly into the well. It’s not the well we use for water, runoff from the back half of the house goes to it. Anyway, cancel most of the trees I was considering, I need something with shallow roots. I’m now pretty set on fish tail palm, I’ll let 2 or 3 pups grow out and keep the rest cut back. I can keep the bottom fronds cut and the trunk is rough so I think orchids and bromeliads will attach to it. Same problem over between the outside shower and the pond, I wanted some more timber bamboo but it’s solid rock about a foot below the surface. I haven’t got that one figured out yet but hibiscus has wide and shallow roots so that might be a solution.

Once the hardscape is in, I’ll take you along on some trips to nurseries in the area.

another round of construction

Jonna — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 22:07:57 +0000

We’ve now lived in our house for over a year, it doesn’t really seem that long to me. One of the things that kind of bugs me is I’ve never gotten to a place where I think, OK, this is about complete. I really do want to have an open house for friends here in Mérida but I’ve never felt it was ready yet. I decided I had to pick something and say ‘enough for now’. We already have a fine coat of salitre on the walls so they look old and like they haven’t been painted in 100 years. Some things, like these salt deposits that appear through paint, sealer and concrete, I’ve decided to get Microsoft about – it’s not a bug, it’s a feature! I decided that people spend millions on old Italian villas with the same stuff on the walls, so I don’t let it bother me.

Before

The garden though, that had to get fixed. It was beautiful with the stone and I think it would have been perfect for someone else, perhaps a snowbird or someone without pets or a yen to plant things. For us though, it really did not work. We have 3 fair sized dogs and they have a steady output of poop. We pick it up but getting it off uneven rock is not easy. Think of an English muffin with all those nooks and crannies. After your best attempt with the bag, you have to hose off the residue and the only place it goes is into the sand the rocks are seated on or down the drain into the dry well. The smell was a bit rank in spots.

Henry explaining what we want to the head albañil

Plus, I’m a gardener. Not always a good one as my previous green thumb seems to have turned brown on the edges down here but I’m an enthusiastic one. There was very little space for anything to be planted in the ground and pots had to be very large – don’t ask how Hombre has killed several of my plants in lower pots – but they also didn’t sit well on the uneven stone. Lounge chairs or tables were out of the question too, unless you wanted to wobble around on them. Mimi and I have both turned our ankles walking out there and the number of times I’ve almost fallen out of my chanclas is high. As these things piled up, we really started to hate those rocks. Mimi even got out there and dug up about a dozen of them to allow a place for the (ahem) run off from hosing them down. Then she had to go out and turn the sand over every week or so or the smell killed us.

designing a planter

So, yesterday was day 1 of the big yard update. Henry had done some drawings and we’d decided that it was simple enough we could just line out where things went and keep it simple. I thought it great when they showed up with lots of pieces of curved plastic pipe in different lengths. Using those to make lines with cal, the shapes were smoothly curved and organic, you could bend the pipe wider or narrower as you wanted. If you made a mistake, a broom was the eraser.

it begins

The workers cleared all the terrace plants and furniture so there was a straight shot from the front door to the work area for block and cement. Then they started prying up the rocks, the smell when some of them came up wasn’t good. One of the things I was careful to include in the design was a border of plantings that could collect run off. Plants will help to prevent that smell from happening, the bacteria on their roots convert urea to useful and clean smelling dirt.

We are using brushed concrete for the paths and an area for the BBQ and for a lounge chair and table. The rocks are being used to build various height planters in several places, some of them will also serve as seating. Always though, there is at least a strip wide enough for plants between the concrete and the plantar wall.

the end of day 1

So, day 1 ended with a neat pile of rocks and rebar stakes to mark where the chalk lines had been. This morning the truck came with block and sacks of cement. The neat stack of rock started coming back down as walls were made for the planter beds.

rock walls go up

Our dogs don’t like most workmen, perhaps it is that they sense fear or it could be that we purposely don’t introduce them. So, they are locked up all day while this is going on. They spend the day on the roof and in the bedroom or in the living room and office. Everyone gets really quiet when we bring Cuba the doberman up or down on her leash, she usually makes a show of it barking and growling. The cats stay locked up too, because we don’t want them scared and now also because we have to keep Tita locked up all the time.

The story on that is that last week Mimi saw her run straight up the rock wall to the top. She couldn’t believe it but she did it. Then, she took off to explore the rooftops and stray cats of the neighborhood. We can’t take the fear of something happening to her so once we got her back inside (bless Whiskas) she’s only been out on her harness and leash. Henry has an idea to put a meter high bamboo wall braced with metal on top of our wall and offset it inside the wall so she can’t escape. That has now become part of this garden project. If we can’t keep the brat inside a 16′ wall then I don’t know what we’ll do, try and live with it I guess.

So, that’s the update. I’m waiting now for the plumber/electrician to come by and show us where to put some pvc for future irrigation and cables for lights in the new planters. Here’s the same angle at the end of day 2.

end of day 2

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it continues…

another round of construction