Category Archives: Tropical Plants and Food

Rincon Trip Goal Outcome

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Don’t worry, we did spend some time at the beach too! 🙂

Well we had a list of things we wanted to do on this trip; some for fun, some for utility. Of course, we often put off the fun and do the work first, but I think we did pretty good overall.

Here were our goals: what we didn’t get to are in red, and what we accomplished are in green.

* Plant banana trees (BK)
* Visit with ARC ENG -the architecture/engineering business in Rincon (CK)
* Visit the Rincon Treehouse place to talk about specifics (BK)
* Visit Mangosteen person in Mayaguez if we have enough time (CK)
* CRIM? We haven’t done this yet and probably should (neither really want to)
* Fix up kitchenette to have running water (BK)
* Get estimate for cost of our property ideas by local contractor
* Get hot running water rigged if possible (CK)
* Buy a heavy duty weed-wacker at Home Depot, as the property is probably very overgrown by now (BK)
*Take a surf lesson – if we have time (CK)
* Have a small little fire at night on the property (BK) (A reminder to be careful what you wish for!!)
*Walk to the beach from property (CK)
* Get rest of bees removed from walls if possible (BK)
* Find closest hospital (just in case-ha) -CK
*Find thrift or 2nd hand stores in the area (CK)

So as you can see, we got quite a lot of the major items taken care of in the time we were there. In addition to these things we also:

*Found our trees that we had planted last time and cleared away the vines and growth from around them
*Weed-wacked the whole fenced area and a little beyond the fence line
*Met with a variety of friends in Rincon/Moca for dinners and poker
*Tried new restaurants
*Planted more sprouted coconut palms
*Planted our avocado pits from the Avocado Party (we’ll see what happens!)
*Found a nearby hardware store in Rincon with prices better than Home Depot and a discount day (10% off on Saturdays) for women!

We still haven’t quite made a decision one way or the other about the wood house. We go back and forth and forth and back, sometimes in the same conversation. There are so many pros and cons to either decision. Getting the bees out of the house really helped us feel more comfortable in it and around it. We could see more potential, and less of a desire to “just get rid of it”. Still not sure though. We would have a long way to go to make it feel like home. Next up for it will be bat removal!! Yikes.

I think we have a pretty decent plan to get the cabana very livable and then we can make our big decision on the wood house. It is definitely cool to have a wood house, as it makes it seem more like Hawaii-style housing: warm and inviting and less like concrete storm bunkers, but as we have seen with all the animals in the house it may be a little TOO inviting.  As you can tell we’re still in limbo on that one.


The wood house from the roof of the cabana

In addition to the bats and the bees, we also had some unexpected canine visitors on our last day there, but they were friendly:

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The Weeds of Our Yard

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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.

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Our Hotel Lobby Living Room

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This last summer we finally got rid of an old, dirty, smelly, scratched leather couch that we had gotten for free from one of Britton’s friends when we first moved into our house nearly 9 years ago (nine years!!?!). Schnoodle had used it as a bed, and Kitty as a scratching post, and it was already a little dirty when we first got it as it WAS after all from a bachelor pad. We had been meaning to do something with it for the longest while, but weren’t sure what to do with it. When our HOA hosted a free roll-away dumpster, we knew we should take advantage of it to get rid of the old thing.


You can see part of the couch in this old picture

But since then, our upstairs living room has been completely empty save for all of our tropical indoor houseplants. Whenever someone comes in, they ask us when we moved in, or when we were moving since it was so barren it looked like we were unsettled. And since we had Puerto Rico on the mind we sorta were.


Our Bare Upstairs Living Room for the last 6 months

Finally, this weekend I convinced Britton that we should at least have a small amount of furniture in the living room to make it seem more inviting. I knew it would be hard to have money leave our pockets but we did pretty good and spent only about $400 on the whole set up (we already had the side table and lamp). We figured would could get by with just two sitting chairs and a rug. That would at least make it feel warm and they would be easy to sell and/or transport when we are ready to move for good to PR.


AFTER- Our Hotel Lobby Living Room

It’s also nice to have somewhere to sit to put on my shoes in the morning instead of hopping around by the doorway. Since we don’t have a TV or anything upstairs, I think it looks sort of like a tropical hotel lobby, which is fine by me.

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Puerto Rico Trip To Do List

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We have finally picked the time we will be back down in Rincon/Puerto Rico: mid January 2012. We have quite a bit we would like to get done while we are there. We have been going back and forth on what to do with the current wood house that is there now. We vacillate between fixing it up and tearing it down to build something new. As of now, I think we are again leaning toward taking it down and rebuilding with the wood some sort of “tree house” or jungle structures in the area down below. We probably won’t get started on that with this trip, but we do have quite a few “to-dos” once we arrive. Here is our list so far (and who wanted it on the list):


Bananas in Puerto Rico (or are they plantains?)

* Plant banana trees (BK)
* Visit with ARC ENG -the architecture/engineering business in Rincon (CK)
* Visit the Rincon Treehouse place to talk about specifics (BK)
* Visit Mangosteen person in Mayaguez if we have enough time (CK)
* CRIM? We haven’t done this yet and probably should (neither really want to)
* Fix up kitchenette to have running water (BK)
* Get estimate for cost of our property ideas by local contractor
* Get hot running water rigged if possible (CK)
* Buy a heavy duty weed-wacker at Home Depot, as the property is probably very overgrown by now (BK)
*Take a surf lesson – if we have time (CK)
* Have a small little fire at night on the property (BK)
*Walk to the beach from property (CK)
* Get rest of bees removed from walls if possible (BK)
* Find closest hospital (just in case-ha) -CK
*Find thrift or 2nd hand stores in the area (CK)

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