The (real) White House

   Pink shutters and doors show up really well against a white background.  The work of putting a first coat on the house went surprisingly fast.  Some of the flamingo pink woodwork got a second coat.

Pineapples

   We've planted about 400 pineapples and some of the plants have begun bearing fruit.  When the plants are old enough to fruit, they're old enough to make baby pineapple plants so we'll be planting even more in the future.
   The very first pineapple plants, purchased on a trip north to Kukra Hill, were planted too close to the Caribbean to be thriving...too much salt in the air.   So bit by bit we're moving these first plants further away to a slightly sloping section just to the west of their current location, right where the newer plants are doing well.    
   All the plants, bearing and not-yet bearing, are about 50 feet behind and slightly north of the house...in the same area with bananas, yucca, citrus, and papaya...in other words, right outside the kitchen.  Nobody has to get in a car and go to a grocery store to pay...whatever you have to pay for these things now in a stateside grocery store.

At the base of a banana tree

 Both fruit and baby plants

Rows of pineapple

Incoming

   Some of the most memorable sights take me by surprise.  A squadron of pelicans heading somewhere.

Edible landscaping

   Most of our heavy rains roll in from the Caribbean and so I opted to put as few openings across the sea-facing front of the house as possible.  Thus the front presents a blank expanse and to lessen that effect, after finishing the house, young hibiscus were planted across the front joining a marvelous curving old palm tree.   
   As the project at False Bluff continues, more structures will go up.   A north-south 'roadway' bisects the land we've cleared to date and it's lined on both sides with young coconut palms.  Although there will eventually be buildings on both sides of this roadway, the only house now is the one pictured in the blog so far.  The house sits just to the east, or the lagoon side, of the roadway close to both docks.
   A path leading to the house breaks off from this roadway.  Clumps of lemon grass line the path between the house and the roadway.  In a gentle curve - connecting the hibiscus planted across the front of the house and the lemon grass planted along each edge of the pathway - is planted a woody mint that has stems which twist and turn in all directions.  It doesn't have much of a bloom but it makes really interesting shapes.  
   Both the lemon grass and the mint make great tea.  I've read that parts of most hibiscus plants are good for tea as well, but haven't tried it.  Sustainability!
   The plantings are new enough to not put on much of a show yet, but it'll all come together in a couple more seasons.

Hibiscus, lemon grass, and mint

   Each hibiscus is a different color and each has a different bloom shape.  Until False Bluff I never knew there was such a variety among hibiscus.  Some of the plants withstood transplanting better than others and some didn't survive at all.  The slow growers will catch up and new hibiscus plants will fill the empty spots.

Hibiscus and mint

Good fences (help) make good neighbors

   At the start of this project there were no fences...and no clearing, no papaya trees, no buildings, no newly planted coconut palms, no wells, no banana trees, no dock, no open creek.     
   Opening the creek to boat traffic has increased the number of people who travel out to this remote piece of beach and quickly made 'remote' an almost obsolete term because we're only eight miles from Bluefields and now getting to the beach is easy.  Some of the people who come out to False Bluff aren't property owners but instead remove things that belong to property owners, me included.
   The sections of fence that we've put up certainly don't keep out anybody who's determined to trespass onto private property:  it simply defines boundaries. The first section went up around the area where my staff lives and where most of the project work has been done to date; it went from the pier east to the beach and then north along part of the property line.  
   The second section went from the pier east to the beach and then south along the boundary of that section of property.  
  A wide pathway is been left for public use...a pathway cleared of scrub that goes directly to the beach from the now open creek.

Fence posts

   Some posts for the new section of fence.  

Getting ready for work

   A new section of fence is going up.   When any new project starts, a crew comes out and stays at False Bluff until it's finished.   While the creek was being opened for boat travel (see previous posts), months of work were involved.  There was, of course, downtime for the crew members and lots of supply runs to Bluefields eight miles away through Smokey Lane Lagoon and panga pass.  
  The stay for the current fencing job will be only a few days and so the amount of food, equipment, and camping supplies is less.  Offloading at the dock near the house behind a lockable gate, puts everybody and every thing closer to the campsite.  These guys were on the beach and in the water about twenty minutes after unloading and setting up camp.  Fencing was on hold until the next day.

Equipment and food,

fence wire,

even the boat engine.

Another new stove

   The selection of propane table-top cook stoves in Bluefields is incredible, ranging from one-burner to six, and from stainless steel to porcelain in such colors as blue, green, red, white, and yellow.   This sort of stove may be readily available in Virginia, but the closest I've ever seen are Coleman-type camp stoves.
   We now have a plain-jane two-burner.   Makes that early morning coffee quick and simple! 

Seaside vineyard

   Not actually a vineyard since the plant's not a vine, but the sea grape is pretty amazing and it really does produce grapes. The plant's deep, spreading root system clings to the sand, often right at the edge of high tide where it's daily washed by salty water...to no apparent ill effect.  On a windy day the big leaves drip from the salty water that coats them, blown through the air from the Caribbean...again, to no apparent ill effect.  The sea grape thrives in this coastal environment.  

   The fat grapes form in long clusters of a size between twenty-five cents U.S. and five cordoba Nicaragua.  They ripen unevenly - that is, not the entire cluster at once but one at a time - to red.   The single seed in each makes up most of the grape; but what's edible is sweet and a bit tart. 

Team (is sometimes an) effort

    A rather remarkable husband and wife team live at and care for False Bluff.  And like most married couples... 

one may embarrass the other from time to time.  He posed for this picture.  He really did.  Really.

A thatched roof (grow your own)

   I opted to thatch the roof for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that I really like the way it looks.   Also, thatching is ecologically sound, using vegetation which grows in the area.   What we're using at False Bluff are the fronds from a type of palm tree.  We have since planted some of this palm so now we'll be growing our own roofs for future use.   
   Thatching material is harvested by removing selected branches, or fronds, from a tree, leaving the tree and other fronds to grow.....not by cutting down and thus killing the tree (although I have heard there are some who harvest thatching in just such an incredibly short-viewed manner).
   The longevity and low maintenance of this type of roofing surpasses 'zinc' roofing, particularly close to the sea (which we most definitely are) where salt in the constant breeze takes an immediate toll on everything. Maintaining a metal roof can be a full time job. In fact, watching 'zinc' rust is a time-honored pastime in the Caribbean.  
   And I've been told that when a falling coconut hits a metal roof, at the very least you've got a dent in your roof.   Those heavy suckers bounce and roll when they hit thatching.

Outside

Inside, from an upstairs breezeway and...

from a bedroom (for air circulation, bedroom walls don't reach the roof)

A bunch of thatch-palm babies to plant

False Bluff Views

     In any direction, at any time, beautiful False Bluff...

South

North

East

West

Storage

     The storage room gets an extra door, an added measure of security. 

Ho, hum.....

     Yeah, right!  A typical and utterly splendid sunrise at False Bluff.

POGO

     Pogo, a 'stumpy' manx, was my companion for more than twenty years.  She died at home beside me on May 31, 2012.   Pogo grew so weak, so quickly, that it was clear her death was close and right.  Independent even for a cat, Pogo enjoyed affection on her own terms, but always wanted to be nearby.  She shared the dog door with her chum, Emma, and came and went as suited her fancy.  
    No more.  
    Pogo is buried in the wildflower garden where she used to nap near a clump of coral bells.  Dr. Nan Jack of Church Hill Animal Hospital attended Pogo at her end.

Two of the bedrooms

     Two of the three upstairs bedrooms.  These open onto the east-west breezeway, each with a window that opens to the south.  Painting's not finished but that'll come in time.

Furnishing the house

      There are four bedrooms and a kitchen in the new house that had to be stocked with usable stuff.  Thrift stores in Bluefields provided most of the what was needed to stock the bedrooms and some of kitchen supplies: sheets, towels, pillowcases, bedspreads, blankets (yes, it gets cold at night), knives, a colander. The thrift store finds were washed and, in the case of the linens, dried in the tropical sunshine.   

     No, none of it matches but I've got a tent I don't need anymore for anybody who cares about matching sheets.   

     New stuff -  mosquito nets, mattresses, pillows, and the beds to put them on; and the rest of what I wanted for the kitchen - I purchased at other stores in Bluefields or directly from the craftsmen who made them.  

     The list of what went into the house seemed endless and at one time I felt as though I'd bought at least one of everything in town and carried it out to False Bluff.

Clean linens, waiting to go

Supplies for the kitchen

Pillows

Laundry

   Throughout much of RAAS (the southern autonomous region on Nicaragua's east coast) laundry is done in concrete 'sinks' that have both a built-in washboard and one or two reservoirs for water.   In many houses where there is also a washer and dryer, laundry is still done in a sink like this.   

   All the laundry at my favorite hotel in downtown Bluefields is done using this type of sink: towels, sheets, tablecloths, etc.  In fact someone at that hotel taught my sister, years ago, how to do laundry in the hotel sink after laughing at her first efforts - and she taught me.  We've gotten pretty good at it.  

   When the original small house was built at False Bluff, the northernmost open end of the structure was intended for laundry.  With the new house up, it was time to make good on that intention and get rid of the wooden washboard, nailed to a couple of 2 x 4's under a tree, that had been used for laundry for more than a year.

     So we went shopping in Bluefields.  One of my sons bought the sink as a gift to the project.  We'd like to have gotten a sink with two water reservoirs in addition to the washboard, but considering how much of a job we knew it was going to be to get this heavy sucker out of the hardware store, into a truck, onto and then off of a boat, and then from the dock to its final resting place...I cannot imagine how we'd have managed with the extra weight of that second reservoir.  We didn't buy one of the fancy tiled sinks either like the one shown in the second picture below.

   Though right now water is hauled to the 'laundry room' in buckets, pipes are in place for the next phase of the project which will bring water right to the sink.  Then we won't need our 'second reservoir' which is a bright blue plastic barrel, cut down so nobody falls in and drowns.  Greywater plumbing recycles the laundry wastewater and irrigates landscape plants that will eventually screen the laundry area...in this case hibiscus and hydrangea.

The hardware store where the sink was purchased

Tiled or plain?

The 'to-be' laundry room

The green bar is excellent laundry soap

Sink, in place and in use

A neighbor bearing gifts

     Allen is a frequent visitor who has a farm a lovely walk up the beach from False Bluff.  He stopped for tea one morning bringing gifts of homemade palm oil and sour-orange syrup.  Allen hopes that as the mainland Caribbean coast gets more visitors he can host some on his farm and teach them what he knows about making these and other things.  

The new stove

     The stove, made in Bluefields, sits in a breezeway most of the time but is moveable.  It's divided into two sections:  one for wood burning and one for charcoal.  Charcoal is really cheap, lasts a long time in the storage room, and is great when rain wets all the available wood.  
     Closed, coals in the stove last between meals so you can start a lunch fire from coals left from breakfast.  Also, when closed, the stove can be used to smoke fish and meat.

     Cooking lunch on the new stove

   A small shelf at the front provides usable work space.

Lemon grass tea brewing in a covered pot just before cooking scrambled eggs

Grilled chicken and vegetables