The holidays are in full swing here in Puerto Rico this year. The festivities are on fire and it seems that every other day we have one party or another to attend. It has been so much fun! Thanksgiving with our neighbors, birthday parties, cookie exchanges, encendidos, parrandas, school parties and more. It has been non-stop. It is so true that Puerto Rico knows how to party and the winter Christmas season is the best for that!
When we haven’t been out having fun, we’ve been trying to take advantage of the extra time we have with Aeden in daycare and the fact that it has been so much cooler in order to expand the gardens. We recently planted over 35 new cultivars of heliconias and are so excited to see them grow! The cabana has been steadily booked with guests and so that keeps us busy with maintenance, tours and turnover. It’s been a very fufiling time in our lives. I’ve been trying to make more videos in order to capture the essence of life these days, sort of “vlog” style if you’d like to watch some other things that we’ve been up to. Here’s our channel: LIFETRANSPLANET YOUTUBE
Christmas Fun
Primer Cumpleanos for friend Nico’s Birthday Party
Holiday fun. At the beach, with a Norfolk pine (a tropical Christmas tree!) and surfer statue has been Santa-fied
Winter is the best time for a swim!
Or just visit the beach
There was a fun party at the lighthouse
We went out to the encendido in the Rincon Plaza – the best orchestra in Puerto Rico (Orquesta Sinfónica)!
Cows and geckos- normal sights
Had a fun stop at Tres Sirenas Inn
And an awesome farm called “Finca Brutal”
Thanksgiving with our neighbors was a lot of fun!
The beauty of this place still astounds me
More fun out and about
Some new additions to the garden and harvests
Preparing for a flower delivery and working outside in December!
Check out this GIANT heliconia called “Beefsteak” or Mariae. With our new friend Carlos
It’s been an active period of growth, literally, while we enjoy the holidays as well. We hope yours are going well also! Felicidades.
No, I am not talking about the stock market or the GDP, but rather the original meaning of those words. Literally growing things (including a baby) and going to markets. We have a bit of a schedule and routine now, moreso than ever with a baby. We used to go out a lot more at night with the band and just to hang out at chinchorros or downtown at the ArtWalk, but we now appreciate our quiet evenings with the kiddo sound asleep. So that means our days must be a little fuller. Fridays and Sundays mean market. Fridays we go to the San Sebastian Pulguero (Flea Market) where we do some bartering and buying. Mostly we are in the market for strange exotic plants. Actually we are ALWAYS in the market for those it seems. No matter how much plant life we throw at the property, it just eats it up.
With a new flower find at the San Sebastian Market
It’s pretty fun at the San Sebastian market because we are nearly always the only “gringos” there and so we sort of stick out like sore thumbs. But people are starting to get to know us, greet us and show us what all they have available before we even have to ask. It REALLY helps to know Spanish in these sorts of environments!
Aeden is a favorite with many people at the market including this sweet woman who even sang “Que Linda Manita” to him
Aeden and the birds back at the farm
Saturdays are usually spent back at the farm unless we have something fun planned. On Saturday afternoon we harvest the fruit and flowers for the Sunday Rincon Farmer’s Market.
Look who needs to start wearing shoes soon!
Aeden is now 11 months old! Check out his latest update video
New bromeliads in bloom at the farm
Our avocado that we accidentally cut down YEARS ago, has come back and is fruiting! I am so happy! Yay for guacamole! What’s strange about it, is only one trunk has fruit. So I think it must have been grafted long ago and we’ll probably have two types on one tree. We’ll see!
At the Farmer’s Market in Rincon. Dragonfruit! We have had our dragonfruit plant flower, but it never holds onto the fruit
The Farmer’s Market on Sunday mornings is fun. We don’t make much money, but it is worth it and it’s fairly stable for being summertime. We have made a lot of great friends there. And we use the money to go out and have brunch and drive around a bit afterward. If we make any more than that we put it into buying more plants from the nurseries or flea markets around.
Taking Aeden to Yogufruti after the Farmer’s Market one Sunday
I never knew what fashion tasted like before, but it’s pretty good! haha
During the week we mostly work on the farm: mowing, planting, improving trails. We also clean and do “turnovers” if we have guests staying in the cabana. We also like to pick a day or two to go shopping or an excursion of some sort. Sometimes we go hunting for plants on the side of the road or check out a beach. Lately it has been so hot, that we have been doing everything we can to stay cool. Since we don’t have A/C that means sitting in the baby pool, finding anywhere that has air conditioning and just milling around, eating watermelon and lots of fluids and trying to avoid the heat of the middle of the day (siesta anyone?). The beach is actually too hot for me on those sizzling days since the water and sand multiply the sun’s effect.
Staying cool in our baby pool in the shade like the hillbillies we are haha!
Fun shopping day out with friend Pauline
Stop in at an authentic chinchorro for una bien friiiia
Checking out a beach in Aguada (Tablerock) -great beach for bamboo driftwood hunters!
Fun on the farm! Dad and boy
Man and his horse swimming in Anasco
Not sure, but I believe this is a cupey flower blooming at our house
Britton had a red RX7 when he was a teenager so this made him gasp when we were driving along in Aguada one day! His 17 year-old self has multiplied! haha
He probably wasn’t listening to this type of song back then though (this is a top hit currently on the radio that we turn up when it comes on, and it’s great for Spanish vocabulary!)
Buying plants at Jardines Eneida! One of our favorite nurseries!
At Jardines Eneida. Check out the video:
I call Puerto Rico “Toon Town” and it’s not without reason…Check out this vibrant little house
And this one…who is very concerned with the modesty of its columns haha
Or this awesomely strange creation seemingly out of a sci-fi movie
Driving up the hills of Mayaguez we had a majestically different view of Rincon and Desecheo in the distance
That’s it for the update. Time flies. I can’t believe that a year ago I was hugely pregnant and just waiting for our little guy to arrive and now he’s almost walking. It’s crazy. Nothing like a kid to make time really feel warped.
Here’s a quick little video of some vignettes of our daily life in Puerto Rico. Hope you enjoy. Oh, and I am trying to do a little more with Instagram if you’d like to follow along.
We are constantly on the lookout for new plants, trees and flowers. It seems that most of the viveros have all the same common plants: trinitarias, hibiscus, bromelias, orchids, citrus, avocados. What they don’t have are heliconias, gingers, plumerias and all the exotic fruit trees. We are currently on the lookout for durian, Australian finger lime, and reina de las flores (this is a common tree, but for some reason we have a hard time finding it for sale).
Also looking for Rainbow Eucalyptus like this one seen on the side of the road
At the last pulguero in San Sebastian we had a good score! We found another Ylang Ylang tree (the fragrance is so divine, it is used in Chanel No 5), an achiote tree (a natural food dye for the color red and very cool looking fruit), a huge Tibochino espiga and a Raffy palm (that’s what the vendor called it). At Jardines Eneida we also found some new trees like a Cordia, Saman and mamayito (lemon drop mangosteen).
The meadow area after a good mow -we need to mow about every 2 weeks now that it’s raining so much
I also found this nepenthes pitcher plant that reminded me of well…you know
All the rain has brought out the mushrooms
And so we bought some garden art to commemorate them
Rainy days at the cabin. Notice the new railings!
Still not sure if we want to put rails on the bridge though
The mosquitos come out a lot more in the rain, so we put a mosquito net on Aeden’s play pen outside, that he promptly pulled down 🙂
He’s our little farmer so we did an impromtu photo shoot with him
Our little red is getting so big! 9 months now
Aeden’s 9 month video update
In order to find the heliconias and ginger varieties we want, we have to find direct vendors. The rhizomes don’t do super well in pots for long periods of time, so they have to be directly transplanted as soon as possible into the ground. They also need a lot of space and water, that the average home gardener can’t often provide (hence why they are not commonly found in the stores around here). Well, I found someone online who specializes in them! Not only did Carlos sell us some amazing rhizomes, he also delivered them from San German and helped us identify many of our wild species. We hung out for quite a while and got to know him pretty well. We scored some plants, but even more importantly a new friend who is as geeked out about botanicals as we are! He is a student at the University in Mayaguez and knows a TON about plants.
There is always something to do around here. With four acres of land, two small casitas and a couple of bird coops we are always busy maintaining and trying to move forward with new goals. We try to do as much as we can ourselves with occasional outside help. Here are a few of the projects we have been working on recently.
Britton sawing what I think is a fallen Indian bay leaf tree
Chopping up downed trees
Hurricane Maria brought down a lot of trees everywhere and our property was no exception. One of the many things we did right when we built the jungle cabin was to bury the electric line even though it was 500 feet away from the main. Otherwise, we would have been struggling like the electric company to get the poles up and the trees off the lines. We still had (and have) a mess to contend with however. The problem is that there is nowhere to bring all this wood. So we have a huge pile of wood debris in the quebrada.
It does open up our jungle area to a little more light and we have plans to plant more heliconias and gingers here as we expand our flower business. Britton mainly runs the chainsaw because I am a little afraid of the kickback when I’ve used it. I lopper some of the smaller brush around until we have an area that we can replant. We have a whole section of property (about 3/4 acre) by the Magic Mango and Camino de Pobres that we haven’t even touched and is still impossible to cross without scrambling over huge fallen trees that jut every which way.
Truck loaded with flowers to bring to the market
Flowers and plants
This is one of the more enjoyable tasks around the farm. We go out and find plants -either dig-ups or at nurseries- and then the next day or so we plant them. When we plant a tree it’s really a tough decision because we know that some of them can grow to be huge and we’d rather not transplant too much. With the other plants that grow from rhizomes like bananas, eleplant ears, heliconias and gingers we’re not so picky because they are easily transplanted.
This bamboo is bigger than me and weighed more too!
I love monsteras and they look great in the flower bouquets too
Some plants are very difficult to find and/or transplant like the giant bamboo we recently planted. This probably deserves a post of its own because it took 2 days of digging and a full day of moving and transplanting. I love how the plants and flowers transform the place. The jungle is beautiful on its own, but the broad-leafed plants bring a certain classic paradise look that I just love.
Our cabin in the jungle
The jungle treetop cabin
While there is always something to do with a structure, I would say that the inside of the jungle cabin is now complete. We finished the kitchen and our final touch this past month was to have screen doors installed. Now it is so fresh and breezy that I almost always have to have a blanket on at night! We have more plans for the area around it such as finishing the lower area as well as adding some railing.
Trimming the screen doors
Mango cabana Cabana at the top of the property
The concrete cabana got hit worse by the hurricane than our jungle wooden cabin because it has the ocean view and therefore the winds are stronger. It lost all of its upper railing on the rooftop and the front of the house got blasted like a water pressure treatment for 24+ hours. So we have some projects for it especially as we are now renting it out to guests. We are planning on repainting the outside areas that got blasted as well as the interior.
We also just recently finished sealing the roof again. This is a product called Crossco that is basically a plastic paint that prevents water from slowly seeping through the concrete into the house. Britton also refortified the small bridge crossing since it doesn’t have the other cabana rails as support for it anymore/currently. And I have a couple of ideas for interior decor.
Powerwashing then resealing the roof of the cabana
Before and after sealing
Of course there is always more, but these have been the current projects around the property. It’s hard work but keeps us busy and I love seeing the ever-changing beauty of this magical place.
