This photo and video won't make a lot of sense here.  But I took it to be able to show the "before and after" in a few weeks when I'm done.   On the left is the side of my house.  On the right is what we call Casita 2 that is planned for a guest bedroom and bath.  If you look closely, you can see that I've got some clothes hanging out to dry in the tree, there next to the porch.  That's the corner of the porch where I usually sit and drink coffee or sit at night.  The problem is the view was obstructed by about 5 tons of rocks that were high.    Here we are moving the rocks to get the area ready to level and spread dirt for grass in the future.  It ceases to amaze me what you can accomplish with enough people to get stuff out of the way.   My guys can literally move mountains if I ask them to. Stand by for future photos of the new improved view. The stick house that you see on the left is the framing for a future chicken house that will have a palapa coconut

 I've told you before about my cat, Patricio, who literally just walked into the work area one day and came out of the jungle.   Well apparently, he's decided he likes staying around, because not only does he come to the house now every day about 11 to be fed, but we also found that he's sleeping high up in a tree not far from my house.  It's hard to tell how high this is, but I can tell you that's he's up in the tree about 8 meters.   I've not seen him come down, but have seen him go up, and he makes the climb in about 5 seconds. I was waiting in the town palazzio today waiting for some folks to lead them out to the ranch.  I thought you might like a little video to see what the "centro square" looks like in the pueblo.  Pretty slow moving. 

 Today, I can finally start putting all my stuff up.  I got my kitchen and bathroom cabinets installed today.  I'm very proud of the job the cabinet maker did.  What you see here, plus the bathroom, was the equivalent of about $2,400.00 US dollars.  That included cutting them and assembly.   Staining.  Hardware.  Installation.  Total package.  You can see that I built in a microwave cavity in one of the pantries and the other has a oven/broiler, instead of having a stove oven.   The cabinet man also picked up my table and 4 chairs and stained them to match the cabinets.

 My 300 asparagus plants continue to grow taller.  This is the same asparagus that everyone here told me I couldn't grow in Yucatan because it gets too hot.  Well?  Besides the asparagus, as I've already written, I'm growing 1,000 coconut palm trees from coconuts.  And I'm putting them in between the rows of asparagus and they provide shade for the plants about 1/2 of the day time hours.    Both the trees and the asparagus are thriving.  In 2 years, I should be cutting 100 kg per day of asparagus spears to sell in the market.

 I've been back to the ranch from the states for 2 days.  I'm still unpacking, and the masons continue their work on the rock walls for the new swimming pool.  The pool water level will only be about 1.5 meters deep at the farthest point.  It looks much deeper because the pool will have a masonry bottom of about 30cm.

 I got back to Merida on Sunday night, but spent the night there so I could go shopping for groceries yesterday.  Last night I spent my first night at the ranch.  It is VERY quiet here at night.  Not a sound, and a million stars in the sky.   I've got many boxes to unpack, and work continues on the construction of the pool walls. 

 Unfortunately, I'm still in the states and didn't get to be there to enjoy it firsthand, but Salvador sent me this photo of the first watermelon to be harvested.     This is the first of what I hope will be thousands.

 My back porch faces due east.  I wanted a covering over it so I could sit on the porch in the morning and drink coffee while I watch the sun come up over the jungle.  You can see clearly here that I had original Mayan style doors and windows installed.   My foreman sent me the photos.  I'll be going "home" in about a week from now and I'm anxious to get back and be sitting on the porch.

 I am back in the states for some doctor physical and oral surgery.  I loaded up all my stuff on a truck to ship back to the ranch yesterday, from Houston.  Whew!  Glad that's done, and that I'll finally have all my stuff (meager as it is) with me at the ranch.   Primarily my office chair and crock pot and coffee percolator! Meanwhile, my coconut trees that we sprouted have taken off like they were on steroids!   Photo was a coconut 8 weeks ago.   I am putting the tree plants in bags to grow up larger and putting them in the gardening beds to shade the asparagus in the afternoon from the hot sun.

 I'm growing asparagus plants and there are many of them.  To keep them from getting the hot, hot sun of Yucatan, I've decided to keep the coconut palms trees that we're raising, in the same beds, and let the baby trees give the asparagus plants some shade a few hours a day, instead of full sun.   We'll ultimately have 2,000 asparagus plants and 1,000 coconut palm trees. The asparagus is just barely starting to bud out of of the ground.

 Work continues on the finishing touches inside the house. Shelving for storage in the solar battery bodega

 

 This area where the pool is going was solid rock except for one little walk trail down to the windmill and that trail was about 1/2m wide.  We moved alot of rock to get this pool area.  And then built up the area at the bottom and leveled the ground behind it by building a rock wall.

 Yesterday I made a post about how to fly in your car in Mexico by hitting a speed bump (tope) without slowing down to drive over it.  They are everywhere in the city and also many more per block in the pueblos.   But there is another kind of tope that is seen a lot, but not as much as just the speed bumps.  They are pedestrian tope crosswalks.   And as the name implies, they are for people to cross the street, and people have the right of way.  They also "expect" you to see them about to cross one, and they "expect" you to slow down.  Day or night, it's all the same.  Even if they have on solid black clothing and there is no moon and no streetlights, they expect you to see them and stop.    Emphasis stop .  Not slow down. I've come very close on more than five or six times to hitting someone at night on one, just because they were wearing dark clothing and I couldn't see them about to step out, and I just slowed down to keep from launching myself into t

  Topes and Flying over them.   After making the post last night showing the bull to be slaughtered last night, I was looking again at the photo and thought I'd point out something to anyone in the USA or Canada or anywhere that might be considering a trip or move to Yucatan. The roads here have what I called in the US speed bumps.  They are everywhere.  In the biggest cities, and on many busy roads.  In a few cases you could even see them on a freeway.  Some are wider than others, but most look just like this.  The pueblos have many more per km of road that the large cities.  The message is clear:  slow down. Often times the "topes", as they are called here, will be painted in yellow.  Most of the time, the yellow has worn off, like this one shown here.   Also, most of the time (but not all of the time) there will be a sign to the right of it warning you that there is a tope.    I've learned in Yucatan you have to watch the road and the sidewalk all of the time.  You

 I made a post on August 27th about my discovery of what a cow or bull tied up in the street signifies to the local people.    You can read it here again if you'd like. It means the butcher is showing giving the locals a chance to "inspect" the beef before it's slaughtered that night and it will be available for sale the following day from the butcher.    Saturday market promotion that I had to navigate around going thru the Pueblo to drive to Merida: As we said back in Texas.  Drive Friendly and Share the road.

 I think I posted previously that when I bought my ranch, the reason everybody else had passed on it was because once you left the pueblo of Mayapan, it was only 4 km to the ranch, but that 4 km took at least 25 minutes to drive.  It was the road from hell.   So many big rocks sticking up in the path, and path is really all it was.    A photo of the old road is below, and somewhere back in my postings is a video of driving on the old road.  It was not only slow going, but still beat your brains out.  It was the most dreaded part of any day for me was going or coming from the ranch. From a prior life, I built subdivisions.  Roads, curbs, gutters, underground utilities, and the works.  So I bought my ranch knowing what could be done if I just got a new road to it.   In June I started taking those steps and I had a dozen men with machetes that I pointed "go that way" and that's the way they cleared.  I align myself with my compass and some landmarks and Google Earth when I c

I always enjoyed that line, and song, in My Fair Lady.  The professor had claimed that, given some time, he would make a lady out of Audrey Hepburn's character, Eliza Doolittle, and get rid of her cockney accent.    Click here for the song and scene. I grew asparagus years ago in Texas.  I loved growing it and made a lot of it from just 12 plants, for my family and many friends' families.  We gave away bags and bags of it every week.  And I wanted to grow in here in Yucatan.  But everyone I spoke to said that I would never get it to germinate in Yucatan soil. I have been hoping to find some cash vegetable crops that I could grow on the ranch that would be labor intensive to give me a lot of work for the Mayan helpers I have.  And Asparagus is exactly that.  Which explains why it is so expensive at the grocery stores. It's not a good idea to tell me something is not possible.  It just makes me more determined than ever to at least try and succeed, even at the risk of failure

 About ten days ago I posted about old dogs and new tricks, concerning my foreman showing me how to sprout and grow coconut palm trees from scratch.  I explained that you take ripe coconuts that have fallen from the tree and place them in water or just on very wet, muddy ground.   And after a while it will sprout and bust through the hard shell.  Well?  Today this is what we have from the first batch of 100 coconuts I put out.   More will be like this tomorrow and Salvador said that by Sunday they will all be open and 30 cm or more high.   I was so excited to see this I about Pee'd in my pants.  In fact, I gave him the money to buy 200 more coconuts and we're going to sprout them, and then 700 more.  A total of 1,000 baby palm trees that in 2 years will yield a nut or two.  But in 5 years will be yielding a dozen a piece and should be 3 meters or more tall.  In 5 years, I will have about 20 pesos invested in each one, plus some watering, but I can carry them to Merida and sell

 I wrote in another post about masons in the Yucatan.  They are a proud tradition and a highly sought-after skill.  Some of them, like masons everywhere, take years to develop their skill set, and various years of experience yield various levels of skill. In the post I wrote September 19th, I mentioned about getting my Architect to help train two of my labors in the most basic masonry skill of building a masonry rock wall.   I also mentioned that in Yucatan, (and possibly all Mexico?  I don't know) you refer to a mason with his title before his name, just like an Architect, or Doctor or Lawyer.  You might say Mason Julio can you help me?  Or Architect Edwin, what is this symbol.  If a friendship develops between you and the person, then there could be first names used instead.   In the same way, the mason would refer to me as Don-My-Name. A week ago on Monday, one of the men who is on my construction crew and is by profession a Mason did not show up for work.  Everyone else was the

 Birds and Trees are special things in nature to the Mayan.  We're building several masonry walls around the house at the back and front both.   And when they build a wall, if there is a large stone with a dimple or depression, the Mayan will put up facing up to catch rain water for birds or whatever animals may pass by.   If there isn't a dimple, they'll just chisel one.   I was looking at the progress on a wall at the back today and sure enough, there was a water pool. In this photo of the wall, you can see where they just build the wall over the top of a boulder with a "dimple" bird feeder.   In the background you can see a tree that looks like its got some big tomatoes or something hanging on it.   The Mayans call is Lek or Luch tree.  It is a fruit.  The shell is hard like a coconut and the men at the ranch say it is not edible because it tastes so bad.  But it is good to saw in half, when mature, and make bowls from it.    Today one of my guys was sitting wi