I've always enjoyed gardening at home, but here it has always been a challenge. We're really lucky to have grass in our backyard because the alternative is bare soil and dust. The grass is looked after by the school owners but is doesn't get cut until its up round our knees. The nature strip down the side hasn't been cut since we've been here. Everyone drops their rubbish into it and we were lucky enough one day to find a soccer ball which we donated to the school. ( I showed this same photo in an earlier blog in March on the day of the murder in our street.) We didn't get the man to cut the grass with his machete at the time and it was even higher than shown here.)
We found this starving animal tied up to our fence another day munching away on the grass. He hardly made a dent.
Raul took 3 goes at cutting down the grass with his brushcutter. It was up in the 40`C during the week so he came at 6.30am each day, but only stayed an hour before the heat meant he needed to stop work. Our neighbours who have a 2 year old boy were getting worried about the danger of snakes in our nature strip, so they arranged for some boys to cut the grass in the nature strip and cut back some of the trees which were them dumped in our back yard for us to deal with.
The branches had dried out after a couple of weeks and Glenn always loves a good burn-off as most of our friends already know. We'd been away for the weekend and when we got back, Glenn thought it was a good time to do a proper clean up. All the branches were well away from the concrete fence and the other neighbour's banana plants so he lit the fire. The smoke was going in all directions but the flames were only about a foot high.
Along came the bomberos, the fire-brigade! We're going to put some water on your fire, they said! It took a while before they started but eventually one of the firemen was up on the top of truck pouring water onto the flames.
Glenn marched away with the mop and the bucket and our garbage bin and left the firemen to finish their job. on their own. Sometimes we can't understand the reasoning of people here, the neighbour with the banana plants had been burning off rubbish in his yard all week and there'd been no sign of the fire-brigade, yet when Glenn, the 'gringo,' lights a fire in a safe position they're on to him like a shot. I wish the authorities could deal with the thousands of people who throw their truckloads of rubbish onto our front nature strip and leave their rubbish in mountains on their beaches.
