ABONO DE BORREGO (SHEEP SHIT)

My annual cocktail party was just a little over a month away, so I started doing some stuff around the house.  I did some touch up painting, bleached the grout in my tile counters and walls and arranged for Saul to clean and service my four ceiling fans.  But the most important visual affect for my party is my garden.  I wanted it to look its best.  A some point all guests will make their way up to the terrace.

My hibiscus had never done well.  I constantly fought bugs and disease and I was losing the battle with at least one of them.  It was not going to recover and its twin  was looking funny and dropping all its bud before they opened.  I decided to replace both of them.  Oddly enough, the yellow hibiscus is my oldest plant (other than some palms) and it is still doing fine in the same pot.  It is also in front of the air conditioning unit and gets blasts of hot air all summer (who knows?)   Filipe agreed to take me to the nursery to see what I could find.  But first I wanted to stop at Walmart to pick up some potting soil.  At the nursery what they sell as soil is just dirt.  They say it has compost in it, but really it is mostly some (hopefully) dead devil grass and other weeds.  When the pot dries out it is like an adobe brick with little or no nutrition for the plant.

I could not find what I have previously purchased but there were large white bags of something that said "abono".  I asked Filipe what it meant and he said it was the same as dirt.  Great I will buy that. Then it was off to the nursery.  I was not about to try more hibiscus and hated my two bougainvilleas. The blooms are practically airborne when they fall off.  The blossoms blow across my patio and down the staircase and into my kitchen.  I already have nine palm trees and wanted a blooming bush of some kind. The crown of thorns does very well and blooms all year, but I already had four of them.  I spotted a pink thing that might do.  I already had a red version in that blue pot, and since I got the right spray it had done very well.  The plant comes in red, yellow and pink and is used all over the city.  I was told to go to El Dragon (no idea) and buy a spray.there.  It sells mostly just chemicals.  The City regularly spray all the trees and public planting with something.  It is supposed to be for mosquitoes, but seems to kill everything. It may be DDT for all I know.  Yes, I know that DDT has been banned all over the world for over 50 years, but This is Mexico!

I did not want to buy the whole bottle until I tried it, so he poured a some amount in a spray bottle and filled it with water.  He told me to shake well before spraying.  It worked extremely well (maybe DDT?)  But apparently I did not shake it enough.  As the liquid got to the bottom of the bottle and I sprayed the plant, and it fried it.  The buds and leaves turned brown and fell off.  But it recovered.  So I bought a whole bottle and now shake it very well.  I bought the two pink ones and a canvas bag of soil.  Filipe carried it all up the two flights of stairs for me and dumped it.  After he left I decided to inspect the bags of ¨"abono".  I noticed it said something about using two cups.  TWO CUPS?  Then I read on and it said something about avoiding getting in your eyes and to wash your hands immediately.  What the Hell was this stuff?  So I got out my dictionary.  Abono de Borrego is sheep shit!  (well, literally lamb, but it is still poop).  Filipe speaks good English, but as it often happens, something is lost in the translation.  He lives in a small two room apartment and I am sure, has never had a potted plant and probably had no idea what was potting soil.

Obviously I could not use the bags as extra soil to mix with the dirt.  I was afraid that I would not have enough soil to finish the potting.  I was not about to ask Filipe to go back for more dirt, or drive all the way to Home Depot where I knew they had good soil.  I already pay Filipe too much money for the trip and paid him even more this time.  He mentioned his little boy wanted an expensive toy for Christmas and he was going to have to buy it on time.  So, I thought, Hell, it is Christmas.  You may remember Filipe as the smiling muscle guy behind the bar at my last party.  He has a wife and kid that he supports on his tips from the bar, so I help him when I can.

I had also already arranged for Jorge to saddle soap all my leather and equipauli furniture and he could help me pot them.  I thought the only way was to get as much dirt off the discarded plants as possible.  I assumed after four years (and because of their poor performance) that they well all root bound.  I expected the plant to pull all the soil out.  No, Jorge managed to get the plant out with lots of soil left.  He is a good hard worker and cleaned up afterward by hosing down the deck.

So now I have two new pink things (I have no idea what they are called in English or Spanish).  Obviously they will not become big bushy plants in a month, but they look better than dead ones.  Must continue getting stuff done for the party.  Meanwhile deciding what to do with the other two bags of Sheep Shit !

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THE HOUSE GUEST (LA CASA DE HUESPEDES)

One of the reasons I took this apartment over three years ago, was because it had a guest room.  I thought that it would be perfect for some of my friends in California, and hopefully some of my friends in France.  But no one every has used the room.  Well, that is not exactly true.  You may remember my "sleeping beauty" who was left over from my last cocktail party.  Still not a real house guest.

Last year I met an attractive lady at my local bar.  She was quite intelligent and I enjoyed talking to her.  Eventually we went out to dinner.  After a few drinks I decided to ask her a question that had bothered me since I met her.  "why"  I asked would a classy lady like you visit a toilet of a bar like my "favorite bar".  She told me that her first apartment was near the bar and she just started stopping in there.  Now she was writing a book about the bar and its clients.  That I thought would be a book I would love to read (wondering of course how I would be depicted).  She is still working on it and so far I have seen none of it.

After six months she returned to Canada.  We kept in touch via email and then she announced that she was returning and had taken an apartment just one block from me.  I had her over for drinks several times.  I love discussing politics and religion with her.  She was raised in the Anglican Church and became a deacon in the church, so it took me a while to tell her that I thought all religions are just plain dumb.  I am fascinated by the history of religion and how they all evolved, but think that basically they are just another business trying to take money from the populace.  One night she told me about her problems with a new neighbor in her building.   He stays up all night with the television blasting at full volume and then sleeps all day.  After a couple of sleepless nights she told him that he had to turn the television off after midnight.  He became very angry and irate.

She then complained to the land lord.  After he spoke to the guy, he really became angry and shouted obscenities at her and threatened to kill her, while pounding on her door.  In the meantime she learned that he had been thrown out of almost every bar in town.  My favorite bar tender threw him out and the guy came back and offered a 1,000 peso bribe, if he would serve him more liquor.  He refused. Finally it escalated to the point where she called the police.  He was arrested and put in jail.  For an angry man, a Mexican prison is not something that would improve his disposition.  At that point I told her that she could not stay in her apartment once he was released and suggested she move into my guest room.

Having lived alone for the past 17 years, it was an adjustment, especially since she was a woman.  I sleep in the nude, so the fist thing I did was to dig out an old robe out of my "travel drawer".  It was a wise move for the next morning I saw shocked when opening my bedroom door t see her seated at my dining table typing away on her computer.  Until I have my first two cups of coffee and my cigarettes, I am unconscious.  Conversation is not an option at that hour.  But she was very polite and neat (I noticed her bed was already made up).  She spends 10 hours a day writing.  She has written several books, mostly on politics.  But I am only interested on the one she is working on about my bar.  None of her books have made her much money, so she freelance writes for social media.  Companies hire her to create blogs, or just write favorable comments.  I use no social media at all, so I understand none of this.

Later that morning she went back to her apartment to speak to her landlord, knowing that the ogre would be sound asleep.  She demanded that they evict him.  The landlord told her that "Mexico is a noisy place" (very true) and they were not about to only select tenants that she approved of. Very typically, Mexican men are very macho and do not like being told what to do by a woman.   She was so mad, she started looking for another apartment-  Then she accidentally ran into her landlords at a taco stand..  He told her that she was right and had gotten into a fist fight with the man at 5:00 am that morning.  They had given him a week to move.  The guy said he had paid rent and had every right to be there and that my friend was the problem.  In Mexico you do not need a court order to remove a tenant.  You just go in while they are out, place all their stuff outside and change the locks, so the landlord was giving him more leeway than necessary.  Apparently the mad man was not that appreciative.  We continued to hear about other encounters where the man had become violent.  My bartender told me that when the guy is sober (which is rare) he appears and acts normal.  But once he starts drinking he becomes insane.

After she was here for a week, she moved to a girl friends apartment.  She felt she had stayed with me too long already (I did not protest).  Finally the man did move somewhere  (no one knows where). The landlord changed to locks in his door, her door, and the gate on the street.  He also promised to have an iron security gate added to her door.  A nice gesture, but it will probably never happen.

So far no one has seen him since, so maybe he moved to a new part of town.  I wonder how long before he is kicked out of more bars and evicted again.  The guy hates everything and everyone here.
One might ask, "Why is he still here,  why doesn't he go back home?"  He claims to live in France but is really half Italian and half Spanish (this may account for his disposition).  My friend thinks that maybe he cannot return home and that is why he is in Mexico.  She still is trying to get him deported, but so far nothing has happened.  Always a little excitement here.

My guest room is empty again and my life is back to its normal routine (of doing almost nothing).. I did enjoy our evening conversations over drinks or dinner.   My next house guest isn't due until next May.  He will be here for two weeks.  Hopefully less drama. We will see.

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