Category Archives: Tropical

Falling out of Summer

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The weather has had a pretty big change here.  As I say that Puerto Rico just experienced Irene!  So I suppose change is all relative.

Once a year Cassie and I like to camp out in our backyard in a tent that was given to us as a wedding gift.  I spent quite a bit of time camping up in the mountains when I was growing up.  While it was fun, it’s one of those things that I have done quite a bit so it isn’t something that I feel I need to do.  Sleeping outside under the stars with Cassie is a lot of fun and we don’t have to drive, pack food, pack clothes and figure out all the details involved with a ‘camping trip’.


Our Tent

I used to also camp out in my backyard as a kid and across the street at my friend Matt’s house.  It was a lot of fun and I am sure parents enjoy it because your sleepover (loud kids) is outdoors!

We figured we had better get our once a year backyard camp out done because we have entered into the Fall season (maybe not officially, but you can feel it).  The weather is cooler, the veggies are ripe and the growing season is slowly coming to an end.  We’ve been getting more food from our garden lately too.


Fruit, Vegetables and Eggs

With the change in season we are starting to think about Puerto Rico too!  I hope there isn’t too much damage to the property, but if there is we can just fix and mend like we usually do!  We really enjoy our summer here in Colorado, but the winter is so long it will be nice to have a place to go where we can plant, pick garden and camp out!

I hope all our friends are doing well in PR after Irene.  The few Facebook posts we’ve seen indicate it wasn’t too bad and I hope that is the case.  I’d actually like to be down there for a tropical storm / hurricane at some point.  Just for the experience of it.  Not a major one of course!

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How to Rebloom a Christmas Amaryllis in June

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Similar to what I received

A couple of Christmases ago, my grandma gave me a giant amaryllis bulb as a present. These are fun to grow because indoors even in the dead of winter they will bloom and give you a flowering treat. We watered it and that winter we had a nice big Amaryllis. I kept the plant (surprise, surprise) and continued to care for it, watering it, etc because I thought it would come back the next winter with another showy bloom. But it never did!

It just had these long green leaves that hung off the table. They aren’t ugly or anything, just not anything worth looking at. So I checked the internet how to rebloom an amaryllis flower. Apparently they are actually called a hippeastrum, but commonly called an amaryllis since it’s in the same family. They are tropical plants (yay! I can have them in Puerto Rico in the yard!), but they need a dry season. The dry season was what I wasn’t allowing it to have because I watered it like the other houseplants.


You can see it to the left shooting up like asparagus

So it said to put the plant somewhere dark and forget about it for about a month or two. I put it in the garage in mid March and told Britton I would take it out on tax day April 15-a day I was likely to remember.  I left it there, didn’t touch it or water it or anything for about 40 days or so. Then I (thankfully) remembered to take it out and gave it a good watering around April 15th. One of the two long leaves had died back yellow, so I cut it off, but the other one was still alive.


Just about to open -with a spider on it

I wasn’t sure if it would make it, but it was worth a shot. It started growing another leaf and then right before we left for Puerto Rico in mid May (about a month after I revived it), I noticed a shoot coming from the center. When we returned it was growing tall just like the rest of the jungled yard. It just kept climbing and climbing until finally it started to develop blooms and burst forth with huge blossoms.

So, now you know how to get an amaryllis to bloom again! Just treat it really badly for about a month and it will shower you with beauty. 🙂 You don’t have to do it in June, just plan out about two-three months before you want it to bloom. Then put it in your closet or somewhere that won’t freeze and forget about for about a month. Then pull it out, water it daily and it should bloom for you in about a month from that time. This plant really should be an Easter favorite instead of Christmas as it resurrects itself after you are sure it must be dead!


Awesome!


Super tall with a smooth stalk

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Or a Two Year Plan?

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We’ve been having some discussion about our Puerto Rico plans and we would definitely like to move there more quickly than not. We’d rather be planning our escape to Rincon in the next 2 years than in the next five years. But in order to do that we would have to change some of our goals. The most obvious that jumps out would be for us to keep the main wooden house and “just” fix it up.


There is a certain quality (dare I say potential) about it that  makes it hard to take down

This would probably save us $120,000 and 2-3 years of time if we didn’t have to tear down/construct anew. We could have a maximum budget of approximately $30,000 and do the following in order of importance:

-New roof -est. $5,000
-New decking -est. $4,000
-Build another bathroom/laundry room that connects to the side deck so that we would have a main floor bathroom -est. $4,000
-Build a master bath in the upstairs bedroom -est $4,000
-Put in mold resistant drywall -est. $2,000 installed
-Remodel the kitchen with new fixtures etc –$4,000
-Install hurricane resistant picture window to provide ocean view from upper/master bedroom – $1500
-Paint exterior/interior –$1500
-Refinish existing wood floors –$1500
-Completely remove the outside bathroom that is located on the oceanside deck –$500

Total: Appx $28,000 =Pretty good! -These numbers have some cushion built in, but that’s always good to have when planning a remodel/constructing anywhere let alone somewhere that we are unfamiliar with.

Then at some point after we were living there we could also enclose or make a living area out of the lower part that is currently being used as parking under the house as well.


View of the house from the road

I think with this budget we could get it to look pretty sharp and feel much more open/inviting. It’s not a huge house so it would be fairly “easy” to do. I suppose all of our rental remodels make it seem somewhat less daunting than it would be for most anyone else.

We would still like to fix up the existing cabana and build 2-3 other cabanas that we could rent out to tourists or locals. And then possibly build a pool or do other projects. I think the pool we would do after we were living there though.

I am really happy that we have bought the property. So many new opportunities start opening up in front of us. It’s a really cool feeling.

Here are a couple of videos of both the houses on the property. It kind of gives you a better feeling for the layout of the land and structures as they currently stand. Enjoy!

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Britton Versus Coconut

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We’ve been having fun trying to gather all the fruit on the property. The most obvious to try and collect are the coconuts…but they are also the hardest to get and to open. Here’s a video of Britton versus the coconut (and mango).

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