Monthly Archives: June 2011

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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Five Year Plan for Puerto Rico

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I don’t know about anyone else, but Britton and I like to set goals. In order to set goals you need to be pretty specific otherwise you can just ignore them and say you “sorta” accomplished them or you can procratinate and say you’ll get to them later (but never do). Goals certainly can be changed if you decide you no longer like the direction you are heading or your values change along the way. But if you really want something, you will need to plan out a strategy to get there.


Welcome to Rincon!

Britton and I have talked about our five year goal (and beyond). We had made a five year plan back when we got married in 2005 that we would buy a house in Puerto Rico. While we are technically a little later than our goal timeframe, I’d say we did pretty good with that goal. In those five years not only did we get to our end large goal, but we also set ourselves up with a source of income when we get there permanently by purchasing four rental properties (in addition to our personal house that we bought in 2003). I’d say we have accomplished quite a bit!

So when we started setting up our plan and goals for the next five years they seemed very large and daunting to take head-on, but are not so bad when we break it down into parts just as we did over the last five years. The end goal is to: live in Rincon permanently. Obviously we can still travel and go back to Colorado to visit family and our rentals or go to South America to climb Machu Pichu or Europe for castle adventures, spend the holidays in Italy or go wherever our hearts desire, but we want to call Puerto Rico “home” and to be as comfortable with “home” there as we are with our home in Greeley.

Ok, so to get to that end within 5 years (or hopefully less) this is what we want to do if we want to do it with all the frills.

–Pay off our short-term personal loans we used to purchase property (1st year -this year by June 2012)
–Fix up the existing studio cabana (1st year -by June 2012)
–Tear down the wooden house (1-2 years) (by June 2013)
–Build a couple (2-3) of small cabanas on the property that we can rent out to people as another form of income.  (2-3 years) (by June 2014)
–Build a larger house for us -we are thinking around 2,000 square feet which is approximately what our house in Greeley is (3 years) (start in 2013 finish sometime in 2014 depending on construction delays)
–Build a pool (optional) not a requirement (4 years + 2015ish)
–Pay off at least one more rental property (3 years -June 2014)
–Save up enough money to buy a car, furniture, and living expenses for at least 1 year (before we move permanently -year 4 or 5)

Of course we want to visit our property as often as possible in the meantime and try to get as much done to it when we are supervising it as possible. We also have fun goals like getting chickens, planting lots of flowers and fruit trees, starting a website for our cabana/fresh food business, etc. But I would count those as implicit in achieving these larger goals (to the big one).

So there you have it. It will be interesting to see how much we can achieve in these next few years. Of course, this is all based on the trajectory that we are currently on, so it could be slightly more or less depending on what the future holds. In any case we are looking forward to all the adventures that will lead us there.

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Father’s Day Without My Father

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This Father’s Day has been hard. There is definitely a void in my heart living without my dad. I sometimes still feel him -in my dreams, in my thoughts, in my reasoning things out (what would Dad do or say in this situation). But in my physical realm, there is a hole. It is hard to describe if you’ve never lost someone who is this close to you. Now I understand sympathy cards a little better, I understand sad movies, I understand the fruitless nature of trying to describe utter loss.


Dad, Mom and Me

I have been working through my grief over these months since he died and have tried to channel it into positive energy. If death does anything, it helps you look more objectively at your own life. It helps you realize at some point we will all be there facing our own death….tomorrow or 70 years down the line. In the end, you will have to ask yourself if you felt that you had accomplished what you were set here to do, whether you did what you wanted to do, and how many people (animals, things) you helped on their paths. This understanding is one of the gifts of my father’s death.

I had a really hard time accepting that my dad was truly terminally ill. I couldn’t believe it. It was all I had left -hope- to believe that he would get better and live another 20 years. And so I think it was harder for me to go through all the stages of grief because it felt so raw, so unbelieveable.


Me, my mom, my brother and dad

I think it was ultimately a good thing for me that I saw him take his last breath. He gave this unforgettable moment to me. I was there to witness his transition from life, from struggling, straining to breathe, trying to fill his lungs, his body with life for a few more seconds and then finally letting go to complete calm, complete peace. It was the most incredible and painful thing I’ve ever been through. I was in shock, I was also awed. I felt like I was watching a movie of someone else going through it. I screamed, I cried until I felt like I would die myself. And I was left with what still looked like my dad -a shell of him-, but  it was not, anymore. And I realized why death scares people. It is so natural and such a part of life (I’ve heard once that death is like our shadow, always with us), but yet it is so hidden and confusing because we never confront or face it.

So yes, I think it was good for me to actually witness it -to make it more real. If I hadn’t seen it, I would have been in my mind trying to reconstruct it, trying to piece it together, making it something that I am sure it was not. But I was there! I walked him to the departure gate of the Soul Port (hospital) and said ‘I love you’ and wished him well on his next journey. I saw it in all its horrible glory. I couldn’t deny it. Not when I was slapped with it.

Still it was confusing. Still I wanted to deny it. Still I wanted to turn back time and do more with him, take more videos, take more pictures, encapsulate him forever. But that’s the thing. We can’t hold on to life -to anything- forever. We sure try; we hoard, we save, we collect, we photograph, we memorialize, we try everything in our power to hold on with “dear life” to our dear life. But in the end, there is an end. And that, is hard. There will be Father’s Days without fathers. And eventually there will days without me. And that is the way this game is played. Sometimes we forget this will all our illusions, but death gives us that gift of remembering to live. This is another gift my father gave me.

I miss my dad the most when I think about him not being here physically. When I think about never again going over to visit him and my mom and having him hug me or say “Hey, it’s Casco and the B-Man!” When I think about never hearing his laugh or snorts or little idiosyncracies. When I think about him never again cooking breakfast or flipping steaks on the grill. When I think that he will never be in his body once more.

And whether it’s a delusion or whatever, I feel better thinking that he is still around me in some form. Still watching out for me. And on the morning of Father’s Day while I was still groggy with sleep, I could have sworn I felt his mustache whiskers and lips on my cheek.  And so I have to say thank you, Dad, for all your gifts on Father’s Day without my father.

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