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Irene
When you buy a new home, you know what you are buying. You don’t usually discover a secret room or tunnel. But that is not the case with gardens. They hold deep treasures which, given the right conditions, can bring great delight. I recall in our very first home, a twig in the middle of the yard, became a beautiful snowball bush.
In our island home, I found many treasures. I am still looking for Spanish gold but that is another story. One of the first discoveries was a mature mango tree hidden in the jungle. It was engulfed by taller trees and struggling to find the sun. We freed the tree and waited for it to recover. My neighbor Juan told me the mangos would be delicious. It was a year before we got to taste them and they were good. Best part is they roll down the hill and I find new ones every morning when they are in season
When the workers were clearing the jungle, we found a citrus grove. Well, five or six citrus tree. See my excitement (above) at finding a tangerine. These fruit remain green because cooler night time temperatures are required to develop the orange color we recognize. It is interesting that Puerto Rican’s call oranges “china”, pronounced cheenah. As the story goes, the first boxes of sweet oranges came from China. Not knowing what to call the fruit, they adopted the name on the boxes, which of course was its port of origin!
Another tree we saved because it looked interesting and was growing near the perimeter wall. Six months later on a subsequent trip, I was surveying the property and I was astounded to find cashew fruit on the tree!
I saved this tree but I still have no idea what it is. These berries turn dark purple. There is not much flesh, it is mostly seed. Anybody know?
I am ever vigilant in the garden. Especially because I forget what I planted the last trip and I often surprise myself!
In my PA home I have 4 “Chicago Hardy” fig trees. Depending on the severity of the winter, the trees either die down to the ground or start from the prior year’s growth. We’ve had two milder winters and the trees are getting quite sturdy.
Figs were not on the list for Puerto Rico. However, in July 2019 we took a “farm” trip to the other side of the island and I found a fig tree at Jardines Eneida. Tropical figs? Why not?
Jardines Eneida is worth the visit. They have a wide selection of plants at very reasonable prices. Sadhu Govardhan credits the owner, Milton Perez, with popularizing new species of fruits in Puerto Rico since the 1970’s.
I planted the fig tree next to the back fence. It had fruit when I bought it. I have been removing buds so that the plant focuses on growth for now.
Clearing the side yard jungle was a bit of a gamble. I knew there were some “good” trees in there, strangulated with vines and native brush, but how was I to identify them? We saved some of the mature, upright trees and decided to wait till they would fruit or flower.
Six months into owning our home, we visited in May of 2019. I did my usual examination of the garden to see how it had fared unattended for months. I was stunned to see cashew nut fruit on a tree at the top of the hill. Wow, I owned a cashew nut tree!
Everyone enjoys cashews but few are familiar with the tree, fruit, nut and the complex extraction process. There are two parts, the fruit and the nut that is housed outside the fruit.
The fruit, which is called the cashew apple, is sweet but astringent. It ferments easily, so it is best not to eat too much as fermentation can happen in your stomach. In Goa, the fruit is juiced, fermented and double distilled to produce a beverage called Feni which is 40% alcohol.
My husband can have this fruit, I am not a fan. It feels rubbery to me.
The nut grows before the fruit and is recognizable by its shape. Apparently, the fruit is an “accessory.”
The cashew shell contains an oil that is like poison ivy. To date, I have not shelled any of these nuts. There is a method where you bake them in sand during which the oil seeps out.
My sister-in-law has fond memories of a Mangalorean tender cashew nut curry. I found a recipe here, maybe one day we will make it together.
Decorating the bedrooms was fun! Once I decided on paint colors, I looked for bedspreads to match in each room. Bedspreads, because comforters are of no use in Puerto Rico. It is never cold. And we never plan to air condition like they do in Florida.
I went all tropical, which is interesting because only touristy homes in Puerto Rico are decorated like that. I wanted to create a tropical escape both inside the house and outside. While there are some beachy decorations like shells, I steered away from the beach theme.
Decorating is an ongoing task, until you decide you are done. And my plan is that the rooms are minimalist, given they are not that big. In January, the primary colors were determined by wall color and the bedspreads. In March, Supriya and I bought artwork for each room. Since we put fans with lights in most of the rooms, it turned out I did not need lamps in every bedroom. But I did get a set for the master bedroom. They have bottoms that I will one day fill with shells.
The master bedroom is green. The bedspread is mostly green leaves with blue-gray, pink and white. The windows were covered with a lace curtain to allow the light and air to flow in. We keep the windows open all year.
Once the air conditioner was installed above the bed, I added some home made acrylic pour paintings.
(These pictures need to be updated.)
The second biggest bedroom is in the front of the house and is pink. It has a wall of closets that is mirrored making the room feel even bigger.
The third bedroom is blue. This is the IKEA bed that triggered our first fight in the house.
The fourth bedroom is mustard and holds a full and twin bunk bed. We decided not to install a ceiling fan as it would have been safe for a child in the upper bunk.
We found a strange small bush in the backyard that we were told is an Acerola tree. Our bush is rather old, so it looks a bit like a bonsai tree. Neighbor Isaac has a young vibrant bush in his backyard.
Acerola is also called a Barbados or Jamaican cherry and is extremely high in Vitamin C. Its fruits are a beautiful red. It seems like a few cherries turn red each day, so you could just pop a few of them into your mouth while gardening to get your daily dose of Vitamin C.
As you would expect, the acerola is very tart. I juice the cherries and mix it with other juices like starfruit. Acerola is a good limber (native popsicle in a cup) flavor. It also makes a good pitoro (homemade moonshine rum.)
The bush is prone to sooty mold. I try to keep it well pruned and sprayed with neem oil.
Our house, with its fruit trees, is not typical of the homes in our neighborhood. I’ve been asking questions about the previous owners of the house to understand what motivated them in their gardening choices. The Lugo family lived in the house for over 10 years, approx. 2006-16. They were good neighbors but were not the architects of the garden. In fact, those were the years the garden slowly turned into a jungle. And that jungle would have consumed the whole house and yard had not someone performed minimal maintenance while the house was unoccupied for two plus years.
It was owners prior to the Lugos, an Argentinian family with the name Marcello, who were the gardeners. And, it must have been a spectacular garden. There was a magnificent flamboyant tree in the back yard that unfortunately came down in one of the storms. The hill was terraced and boasted a small citrus grove along with other flowering and fruiting trees. I wish I could find pictures from that era.
When the 2018 HOA president met us, he pointed to the jungle and gleefully said “Now, that is all your responsibility!” And it was a daunting one. I could see there were gems in the jungle but it was hard to decide what to keep. Luckily one of the workers was tree savvy and made most of the decisions on what to remove.
Because of the dense growth, some of the trees we saved were growing sideways towards the house in search of the sun. Some we cut in half, so the new growth would grow straight up. Others we might have to try and straighten. We found beautiful sea grape, the draped the hill beautifully seeking the sun. I loved it as is. Unfortunately, a worker, who I asked to cut specific trees, decided this one need a trim as well. I am now trying to force the sea grape to grow low to the ground.
Towering above the jungle and identifiable from the road approaching the development are two tall trees. The first is the ceiba (also known as kapok or silk-cotton) tree tcan grow up to 100 feet tall. My tree may be 50 feet tall. Young ceibas have large thorns on them, so our tree must still be young. One day when I was working on the slope, I slipped and placed my hand on the trunk to stabilize myself. Ouch, those thorns went right through my gloves.
The ceiba tree develops a large system of buttress roots. These are roots that grow tall to stabilize the tree. I’m not sure if I want this tree to take over the front yard, but the ceiba is revered as a sacred tree. The Mayans believed that this tree connected the underworld, the world we live in and heavens.
The second tall tree is a tropical almond tree, and is very different from the commercial almonds we are familiar with. This tree can grow up to 80 feet. It has large leaves that go from green to orange and red and eventually drop. The fruit is a beautiful deep purple. It is difficult to get to the pit and small nut within. The local shops sell a brittle made of these nuts that are as sweet as Indian mithai. They are delicious, store them carefully as the ants love them too.
I am not sure about the future of both these trees. While they are unique, they do not have showy flowers and delicious fruits. And we have to clean up after the almond tree.
We found a tree with the most beautiful flowers that Neftali identified as a tree orchid. Due to an unfortunate series of events, this tree was cut down. I hope to find one to replace it. There is another orchid tree in with white flowers. It’s leaves close at night, a fact discovered by Ritchie when he was searching for coquis at night.
One tree I saved but later removed is the noni. It is believed to be a superfood. It looks funky and has soft yellow wood. I later learned that iguanas love their leaves and they end up looking like a scraggly mess. That was the end of the noni tree. Or so I hoped. I now realize under my hill is a sprawling spaghetti-like mess of roots. It’s like a game of whack-a-mole. I dig up the tree in one place and it shows up in another place!
It was expensive to deforest and haul the debris away. I later learned that we have yard waste (in addition to trash and recycling) pick-up included in our HOA fees. Every week, they pick up bags of yard waste. And if they see that you have a large pile, like I do at the end of each trip, they send the big truck with robot arms that easily hauls away huge tree trunks.
Deforestation is an ongoing process. Everything grows so rapidly, they continually need to be tamed. The native bushes, brush and vines continue to come back with a vengeance. Bryan, the owner of Montoso Gardens said “You have to keep putting in the plants that you want and slowly they will crowd out the ones you don’t want.” This is good advice for life too, isn’t it?
It was time for house renovations! We provided the contractor with a list of all the things that needed to be fixed. He came back with a detailed quote which we pulled apart, and finally deciding to do a subset that fit in our budget. We came to an agreement and the work was to be completed in about a month.
I selected colors for the exterior. In Puerto Rico, houses come in all sorts of colors. I decided on blue and white, which my Puerto Rican friend said was a perfect Democratic choice. Each room had its own warm color. It was going to be a colorful Caribbean home. I tried to be as specific as possible, as I did not want any mistakes due to miscommunication.
I was anxious to go Puerto Rico, but as was custom, we spent Christmas with the family. Christmas was a perfect time to start shopping for the new home. So many sales. But how does one take all this stuff across so many miles. I discovered that we could use boxes maxed to Frontier’s check-in luggage requirements. So I packed and re-packed these boxes till they were perfect – under 62 linear inches (that’s length + width + depth) and no heavier than 50 pounds. Don’t you love those handles fashioned by my creative husband?
Mid-January, we left for the enchanted island. The work should have been completed, but of course it was not. So, we again stayed in our friends home, and traveled to our casa and worked on it.
I was eager to spend my first night in our new home but without basic utilities like water, electricity and gas, it was simply not possible. So we worked until it was dark and before the mosquitos could eat us alive (the screens still had holes) we departed.
When we were not working, we were shopping. We were either in Costco, Sam’s or Home Depot. I was super driven. I wanted all the bedrooms livable as soon as possible. So we bought beds, mattresses, pillows, side tables…. While I don’t regret any particular purchase, I could have taken my time. It was not till Sept that year when the whole family came and all the bedrooms were used.
We bought one bed and two side tables from IKEA. The IKEA showroom in San Juan is probably one of the smallest in the world. They take your order then schedule a time for you to come back and pick it up. I know there is a warehouse somewhere but who knows, maybe you order gets shipped from Miami… Anyway, what happens when two tired people work on assembling IKEA furniture? You guessed it – a full blown, loud fight. It was our first fight in the house, well on the island. The windows were open and I’m sure the neighbors heard it. Guess we got that out of the way. Anyway, Santosh was unhappy that we did not have any fun on this trip and it was work, work, work. Project creep as he likes to say. So we did take our last afternoon off and enjoy the beach at Rio Mar.
I have a lot of ideas and am looking for collaborators in these efforts.
- Mentoring young people
- Cleaning beaches
- Mission trips
- Encouraging backyard vegetable and fruit gardens
- Creating a business
It’s time to settle on our Puerto Rican dream home! That’s what I’m thinking, but my husband must be worried about owning a house he has not yet seen. We have not shared the details with our friends, wanting to wait till everything goes through.
We fly in on Oct 11th and stay again at the home of our friends in the Wyndham Rio Mar. The next day we head to the bank in San Juan. Santosh still has not seen the house. The paperwork does not take a lot of time. We sign a bunch of legal documents and finally we are given keys to the home.
We take off in the rental car, I am excited to show Santosh the house. At the security gate, we show our deed to prove that we have a home in the development.
We pull into the carport and open the kitchen door. As we step into the living area, we discover that it is flooded. The drain in the atrium was clogged and it filled with water and seeped into the rest of the house. Some of the lovely wooden doors are damaged.
Our realtor introduces us to a contractor and we discuss what needs to be done. All the walls and the ceiling need to be repaired and painted. The roof needs to be resurfaced and water-proofed. The whole home is tiled and it is in decent shape. We plan to gut the bathrooms. We hope to keep the kitchen as is.
Santosh decides to to try and unclog the atrium drain. He buys a drum auger from Home Depot and tries to clear the drain. No luck. He then uses a drain bladder connected to a garden hose. After the pressure built up, we hear water gushing in the street. Turns out a child’s rubber ball had blocked the spout outside. My creative husband saves the day and $400.
We prepare the house for renovation, removing rusted fixtures, outlets, shelves and a TV mount.
I notice that the neighborhood cats have been watching us. Later we discover that our house is their local hangout. They still stop over to visit. I am allergic to cats so I am not a fan. But when the house is empty there is no one to stop them.
The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second best time is today. So I plant mango, papaya and banana trees. And sow a few seeds.
We begin to purchase stuff for the home that we find on sale at Costco and stash them in our friends closet.
It’s a quick trip. We leave after 5 days. Despite the shock of a flooded house, Santosh is happy with what he saw. I guess the descriptions, pictures and the videos were not far from reality. Now comes the hard work, how do we make this house a home?
After the euphoria of the girls trip died down, I got to work – I needed to buy a house (and a tree laden with starfruit) in Puerto Rico. I had to get preapproved for a loan and make an offer on the house. Given a bank owned the home, and they had most likely had already written it off, we made a really low offer. They did not like the offer and counter offered by reducing the asking price by $10,000. We set a max price and were prepared to walk away if we could not come to an agreement below that price. Well, I really did not want to walk away but it might come to that.
After three more iterations, the bank came back with its final offer. Too high. We provided our final offer, the max we had set. Then we waited anxiously. I remember my excitement when I received a text from my realtor on Sept 1st 2018 congratulating us.
We did it! OMG! We just made an offer on a home over a 1,000 miles away. Was I nuts? Along with the excitement, there was definitely apprehension.
Because the seller was a bank, the purchasing process was simpler. There was no uncertainty related to ownership or liens. This can be a problem in Puerto Rico as homes pass from one generation to the next without proper paperwork.
One concern was that the house was being sold “as is”. There was an inspection by the mortgaging bank (which was also the seller) and we received a copy. No major issues. No roof, no basement means less things that can go wrong. Or so we thought.
Settlement was Oct 12th 2018, just seven months after I had embarked on this journey. Pretty impressive! I stayed on top of matters providing all the documentation as quickly as possible so as not be on the critical path.
Recall, my husband had not yet seen the house. The girls in the family had, but the boys had not.
What if Santosh is not happy with the house?