Life Transplanet

Today is my birthday so we figured we’d go out to dinner. Not so easy. A lot of places are closed on Monday and Tuesday in Rincon.  We ended up making a nice little tour of the town stopping at various restaurants..lol.

Checking to see if Casa Isleña was open…Nope.

Checking to see if the Harbor Resturant was open…..Nope.

We tried Ode to the Elephants too, but they aren’t open till Wed.  So finally we went to Villa Cofresi.  That turned out just fine.  Sun setting over the ocean, live music, good food and even a piece of birthday cheese cake.

I got to thinking about it and I don’t think that I’ve spent a birthday outside of Colorado!  So this was a first for me.  It’s been an interesting life and journey thus far.  I didn’t ever expect to have accomplished half the things that I have!  It’s fun to look back on life and look forward to more and celebrate the opportunity to be alive.  That’s the best gift of all!  Well that and this table to sit at:

This year’s birthday gift (very useful)

We have been making the place a little more comfortable each day.  Today we got a table from Sams.  It’s nice to have a place to sit other than the bed..lol.  Plus it’s an outdoor table so we can use it on the roof/patio too.  We got an electric shower head / heater as well, that I will post more about later on.  Suffice to say it’s more comfortable to have warm water rather than cold swimming pool water in the morning!

Overall it was one of my favorite birthdays!

We went down to Home Depot in Mayaguez (the nearest main city with all the modern amenities you could think of) and picked up a trimmer and some more supplies to finish putting screens on the windows of the cabana. Then Britton got to work trimming the whole “front yard”.

It’s not really a yard in the same way you would think of a lawn in the states. The front area is more of a parking place, but with all the growth from the last 8 months it made it like a yard. Before he whacked the heck out of it though, I wanted to check if there were any plants that I knew of that were good. I still don’t know all my tropicals as well as I do my backyard Colorado plants, but I can tell a mango tree from a citrus or a banana (and there are a lot of mango seedlings too!).

So without further ado: Like sand through an hourglass, these are the weeds of our yard. Please help me find out what these are or correct me if I’m wrong in my guess:

Not sure what this is, but it’s really pretty!

The Traveler’s Palm has about three babies sprouted at the bottom of it.

We found more sprouted coconut palms and the one we found and planted last time we were here looks to be doing good.

Here’s the one we planted last time we were here. I know these are coconut palms but does anyone know the type? I think they are the “water coconut” variety and not the meat coconut. How can you tell the difference? How can you tell when they are seedlings?

Anyone know what this is? Is it edible?

Mother-In-Law’s Tongue -this is a houseplant in the states but here it is a yard weed!!

There’s a ton of these types of plants on the steep side of the property. I’m thinking maybe Ornamental Ginger plant? Is the ginger in ornamental gingers edible or good for you?

These aren’t weeds, but they are Mandarin Oranges we found on a tree on the property!!

This one looks just like houseplants I have seen often. Not sure of the name though.

This is just what we found on the first 1/4 acre. We still need to trim down a little further and see the plants we planted last time and take off some of the vines from other fruit trees that we know of on the remaining 3 3/4 acres! It’s amazing how just looking at weeds can be so fascinating. I guess that’s why we go places out of our comfort zone. We learn something new from even the smallest things.

We got into Aguadilla at about 1:30am last night (local time).  The flight was uneventful to Newark and from Newark into Aguadilla.  We got our rental car and headed for the property.  It was pretty dark and traffic was light (obviously).  We got here and vines had covered up the front gate.  I got out of the car and started tearing them off by hand.  I got enough of them off, so that the gate would slide open and drove on in.

Rental Car This Morning

The weeds appear to have grown quite a bit in 8 months.  It’s about what I expected to see though and isn’t too bad.  We were able to drive the car right in over top of the ‘weeds’ and park.  I went into the small cabana not exactly knowing what to expect.  It looked about the same except the paint on the ceiling had continued to flake off, so there was quite a bit of paint chips on the bed and floor.   A quick sweeping took care of that.  We dusted off the bed and got out our covers/blankets we stashed from the last visit.  Other than a few weird noises we went to sleep pretty easily.

The Concrete “Cabana”

I feel that the first order of business will to be to get a trimmer and maybe some paint / paint supplies from the store.  That way we can start to carve out a nice spot for ourselves, then expand the spot as we move along.  We also want to get some plumbing done and maybe some more bees removed while we are here.

The bees that were removed on the last trip have stayed gone, so that’s a good sign that it won’t be a futile attempt.

On the sidebar of this site, you may have noticed a little green vine crawling up the side. Well, we have added a new feature: the Moving to Rincon Progress Meter. It is a scale from one to 100 that will track our progress to our goal of living in Rincon, Puerto Rico. Mostly it measures the amount we estimated that we need to save in order to move there and be able to do some major upgrades to the property, but it also covers some things like ongoing income sources as well.

At this point in time you will notice we are at approximately a 35 on the scale or 35% of the way there. We estimate an increase of more or less about 5% per month on this meter. We thought this might be a fun way for those of you out in Internet-land to watch the progress we are making as we close the gap to moving and living in Rincon. We will be down visiting Rincon in just a few short weeks, so watch the blog soon for updates straight from there.