I have been working like a burra in a milpa. At least that is what Beto says. I am taking it for a compliment. He also renamed my patio/kitchen garden. Milpa really does make more sense although I had to argue to keep him from planting corn. The mapaches are pesty here, at the edge of town. They swipe the neighbor's elotes or ejotes (never can tell them apart.) eat them in my grandkid's clubhouse and then poop the place up!
The first of June I found someone to lay the pavers, restring the wire fencing and repair the raised beds in a fenced in, raised- bed garden that had gone to hell at the side of my house. Beto did all those things, never mind he is three years older than I am! I had been trying to get this done for more than 3 years. Contractors--YOUNG men-- would show up, give me an estimate. I'd say fine and never see them again. I actually paid 1/2 in advance to one outfit that never showed up to work. (They do apologize when I run into them at the town's one Lumber Yard or café or grocery store and promise they will be out tomorrow.) (Awkward for both of us and for the people who have to witness the apologies. It's a small town.)
I live in the last house in town, on a dirt road that everyone uses to drive into town. Over the past year, at least 4 people have stopped by and offered to buy the 5 stacks of pavers and edgers, at the side of the road, cheap, to take them off my hands. And then my neighbor said "I know an old guy who needs work. I'll send him by."
And, to my amazement, he showed up and started to work--no estimate, no money up front. Ten dollars an hour and we shook hands. He actually put down his pala and gave me his mano, then resumed trabajando. The catch is that he only speaks Spanish. You say "but shakey--you are a Spanish teacher! This should be the perfect arrangement."
Pues…, I do speak Spanish but my major was in Spanish Lit. I can tell you about El Libro de Buen Amor or why Miguel de Unamuno depresses the crap out of me but I am not into the nitty gritty--- like confusing carnations and nails, or porkchops and handsaws, or garden hoses and the capital of Nicaragua. Tenses, especially the conditional, also trip me up, so that when I showed Beto a spot in my yard and told him that someday I would like a pond there, I was only wool gathereing. Then I went to the post office and when I came back he was digging a pond!!!!!!!!
I thought about telling him that I am too chinga-ing old to actually maintain a pond but did not have the words. I did get him to stop but not until he had dug a good three pies by five pies-- (not pies but feet--see what I mean? )
SO I bought a small pond liner and then went with my brother to pick up some limestones to border the new pond. We took the stones from our family ground, about thirty miles to the north of my present home. It was a nice trip. No rattlesnakes. We bonded while picking through stones hand carved by our great great grandfather and we also found some nice fossil stones-- shells and something crawly--stopped for a beer and a sandwich. Never once remembered that I had told Beto that I would like a couple of new flower beds by my deck and a paved path and a bigger place my hostas! Guess you see where I am going here.--shakey