A work Day

The day after Christmas...Boxing Day

Right as we were getting up the phone rang. It was Jose. He and Tomas were going to our land to finish a small job and wanted to know if we would be there. No mention of Christmas and the invitation we thought we received. Of course, we did not bring it up. When we saw them they were happy and chatty and, like always, working hard and smiling.

The speculation still lives on.

We, too, did some work today. I watered our palm trees. Work?.. you laugh. Before I tell you what it means to “water our palms”, and to understand the effort we put into it, you need to realize we have/had zero green on our land. Yes, when it rains for a week or two a year, some “grass” may appear for this same amount of time, but the remaing months we have nothing there but cactus and some rather dead looking brush; "sticks", my friend Megan calls our vegetation. Now we have 23 palm trees!!! THIS IS HUGE!!…and extremely exciting for us! Soon we will have a huerta!

Here is how we begin the 2 1/2 hour process of watering our palms. First we have to unroll, by hand, the perfect circle that is in reality a green garden hose. I than drag it 50 meters, or 160 feet across the property, through brush and over a roadway. Next we connect to this green garden hose the fire hose that Maurice has. Yes, a real fire hose. This is also kept curled up and placed neatly inside what will one day be Maurice’s work shop. After these two are laid out, screwed together and stretched to their max, which covers this 50 meters rather well, we attach one end of the fire hose to the gas water pump. This pump was specially purchased in Lapaz, for this job. Attached to this water pump is yet another hose that drops into one of our septic containers, which at this time contain freshly delivered water. (Yes, we have our watered delivered from a large water truck. This is our only source of water. It is about $60 a delivery and we will need one about every 5 or 6 days until our B&B is “up and running“. Than we will have to have deliveries every other day...we figure)

After all these pieces are in place, the pump is primed, the oil is checked, the gas is topped off, and than the cord is pulled and yanked and cursed at until the pump jumps to a start. Next, over a two hour period, I move from tree to tree watering our 23 palm trees that were transplanted just two months ago. This process had to be done three times a week for the first three weeks. Poor Maurice I say, since I was in Canada at the time. Now it is down to once every 5 to 7 days. I drag the hose around the land from tree to tree, getting it caught on dead cactus and other un-recognizable plants that still need to be cleared away. After the process is completed everything is reversed. All the hoses get wrapped back in their circles, by hand, and by now they have gotten wet and so they are muddy and so am I. My feet are splashed and dirty, my legs have dried mud on them, my light blue Liz Claiborne golf shirt has mud on it as well. (My work clothes are still on a ship somewhere in the Atlantic which I will tell you about another day) When I am done and covered in mud at least it APPEARS that I have been working! While I was watering Maurice was doing “real work”, pulling wires and placing electrical plates inside the bodega, getting ready for our move.

After these chores we head to the beach. Today the beach was empty. As far as you can see there is not a soul. No one. There are remnants, still untouched by the surf, of walkers that must have been here earlier in the day, but we see no one. A cooler in one hand, a beach chair in the other, we set up camp. It is a glorious day made more spectacular by my epiphany. THIS IS OUR HOME! WE LIVE HERE! This is our beach and everyday we can be here if we chose. We can stay as long as we want. We can do whatever we want. This is home. Maurice and I laughed in awe at this idea! As if to celebrate our realization, for the first time ever, we saw a school of flying fish going south to the Sea of Cortez. Flying fish really do fly! There were either hundreds of them or a few very busy fish. They were leaping and flying from surf to surf and they glistened in the sun. When we told our soon-to-be-neighbor, Cuco, a local potter who has squatted on this land for 30 years, he said he has never seen this. He could not believe we were lucky enough to have witnessed it.

A rainbow around the sun and a school of fish leaping through the air...Maurice said we are lucky we “turn our eyes”. (Being born and raised in Italy, of course speaking Italian, he also uses expressions like “nap cat” when he snoozes) He said too many people miss things in life because they do not “turn their eyes“.

So my message to you today is, “remember to turn your eyes”. There is too much beauty around us.