Week 44

I have an overabundance of photos to share this week. I could give a lot of excuses but the bottom line is I'm feeling too tired/lazy/lethargic this morning to narrow it down to just seven. After a cup of coffee I still need toothpicks to prop open my tired eyeballs. Methinks it's one of those days that will require mainlining the caffeine and hopping in the shower to jump start this old heap of bones.

Last weekend while visiting folks, at one of our stops the older woman of the house blessed us with five trees: fig, algarrobo (hard wood), red oak, ombú and Japanese gingko (which is supposed to help with memory so should I start chewing on the leaves?). For now we're keeping them in the pots until we buy the lot and can plant them permanently.

I received a packet from my sister! They're always fun because she includes yummies like Ranch dressing mix; this time there were a couple of dry pasta sauce mixes as well. And photos... they just bought a house so there were before and after photos (LOVE those!) and some pictures of my nieces that I didn't find right away because I was so enamored of THIS:

Isn't it gorgeous?! Love the colors and the bold print design. It is the perfect size for all my stuff (much, MUCH better than my old minuscule leather wallet that couldn't hold even half what I typically need/use). I always enjoy seeing how the girls have grown. In one of the photos my youngest niece looks just like her mother at that age -- I think it's that missing-a-front-tooth-grin :)  THANK YOU for the packet Beth!

One of the branches on our peach tree broke this week :(

 We think it has been attacked by some kind of bug that's burrowing inside, but we honestly don't know. The branch had plenty of tiny fruit on it, but not enough that should cause it to break. 

Took a drive out to the lot to see how work on the new costanera is coming along. They've installed these huge drainage pipes because the area slopes considerably so now runoff from the surrounding streets will flow into the river below and not just sit on the nice new road.

That fence you see in the background is the corner lot and ours is just beyond. We're seeing some progress on the paperwork but, as with anything, it is just moving slowly. We found out that the office that registers deeds was taken over by another government agency after a number in the office were indicted on charges of fraud. So a system that's already S-L-O-W by nature just got a whole lot slower.

Our immediate plan for the lot is to fence it, put a new roof on the casita, and build a 2-story garage (so we have plenty of storage space). That's all we'll have time for next year before we go on furlough (IF we even have time for that). Then we planned to move into the casita after furlough and live in it while building a house. BUT the casita is teeny, tiny, itsy bitsy and I wasn't looking forward to living there indefinitely... it could take a couple years to put up a house, doing it as we have time and money. Anyway, one of Ivan's friends suggested we consider putting an apartment over the garage so we'd instantly have a place to live while building the house. I liked that idea LOTS better than living in the casita! If we make the garage footprint just a little wider (from 4 meters to 5 meters wide) and keep the depth of the building at 10 meters as planned, we could certainly fit a small one-bedroom apartment upstairs. I played around with some graph paper and measured furniture, countertops and appliances, and even the toilet and bidet to make sure we could fit everything in that we'd need.  Here's a rough draft of my ideas (please ignore the general wonkiness -- drawing is definitely not my forté):

I had to share this close-up of the pretty flowers in front of our house. They didn't show up in the photo I shared last week because they're very low to the ground and were hidden by the fence.

And our garden is going nuts. We're already eating lettuce from it!

My dill is looking mighty fine, too. Hope it doesn't go to seed before we get back and I have time to make pickles!!!

Ivan bought tomato plants this weekend and planted them in the old agitator we hauled back from Sta. Rosa. It didn't work so we re-purposed it into a planter.

It's on wheels so Ivan an roll it around the yard to wherever there's sun. We're thinking that's why our tomatoes haven't done so well in the past. We shall see if this works better.

Friday night we had plans to go to a concert in a nearby town with my Spanish teacher. But after driving over, we discovered they had canceled the concert in deference to the recent passing of a former Argentine president (who was the husband of our current president). Before heading home we walked around a bit and took photos. My camera doesn't do very well at night but I did think this was a pretty cool shot of the old Jesuit church.

While we're gone our co-workers are moving in and their two oldest will be coming home the end of November for the holidays so yesterday I cleaned up the study, and slid my sewing table under the bigger desk so they'll have plenty of room to set up a twin-size bed in here.

I haven't had any time to sew in a while and the room had become a dumping ground for all manner of stuff. It took the better part of a day to excavate clean it up.

There you have my week. How was yours?