• 30Oct

  A bit of old Mazatlan…

  Mazatlan, maz people, resources 5 Comments

  I’ve always been a lover of old things.  Before we moved to Mexico I always had a lot of antiques in my house. I even restored a 1907 Craftsman bungalow in a previous life!  One of the shocks when we moved here and we had a big house to furnish was how little vintage furniture there is in town.  Almost none!

  Long time readers of this blog are aware that we have done a couple of projects lately that incorporated the use of salvaged architectural elements into the work.

  In our back yard, we turned crumbling cement  into a lovely tiled portico and corredor. (that’s a covered patio) In that project we used gorgeous old mahogany posts and beams.  It is a wonderful space, our favorite place for sitting in a rocker and reading or knitting.  Photos here.

  The other project was the replacement of about 20 feet of wrought iron between our central courtyard and the sala fresca.  We had salvaged 100+ year old windows installed, and used old beams to reinforce the roof where problems had developed.  The windows are great to have closed during the rain and wind but most of the time they are wide open, and we love them that way. Photos here.

  Both of these projects were managed by a friend of ours.  Well, he became a friend through these two projects.  He has a great team and they do good work.  Through his passion for old house parts he has decided to branch out from being a contractor who uses salvaged materials to also being a supplier of architectural salvage as well as vintage furniture and some newly made furniture using recycled parts.

  Mazatlan hasn’t had anything like this before, and for those of us who have a historic home in Centro it will be a godsend.  But even for more modern houses and condos, a bit of history can give that wonderful depth that only old things can supply.  I expect that builders and restorers up and down the coast of Mexico will be interested in the architectural house parts and designers and homeowners will love to incorporate vintage furniture into their rooms.

  Hace Mucho will be having a sale in December (info on the website) but won’t have a retail store. If you are interested,  check out Hace Mucho here.  By the way, Hace Mucho means “way back when.”

  
• 28Oct

  This climate is amazing.

  gardening, weather 5 Comments

  My last post was about Tropical Storm Rick and how all my plants had been affected.  Everyone said they would recover, and while I was hopeful, I was somewhat skeptical, especially with regard to the bamboo.  Take a look, I am amazed.

  
  

  I guess I knew the banana would do all right, but after just 4 days it already is sending up a new leaf!

  

   

  The handkerchief plant is recovering already.

  

   

  This is the bamboo that shows above the patio roof.  Still pretty awful looking.  We have leaves all over the yard and I expect all the brown ones will fall.  BUT, there are some new green leaves, too.  And we have 3 or 4 big shoots coming up from the base of the plants.
  (and yes, I will get out there and sweep off the roof before the next rain…)

  

   

   

  
  

  
• 24Oct

  The plants took a beating…

  gardening, weather 17 Comments

  Tropical Storm Rick really gave the vegetation in Mazatlán a beating.  Walking the dogs this morning I realized that the west  side of every tree we passed by was burned and blackened or bleached looking.

  A lot of the plants at our house are in pots, and those most affected by the storm were on our upstairs front patio.  Keep in mind that as the crow flies we are about 4 blocks from the water but we are behind Icebox Hill, which shelters us from a lot of the weather.  Our timber bamboo really took a beating, though.  Planted in the ground on the side of our back yard, it has grown to more than three stories high and provides a nice buffer between us and the aparment building behind.  Or I should say it used to.  Whether it will even survive at all is anyone’s guess.  I cut off the stems (bamboo is a grass, after all) that had bent over today, but it is as though more than half of the bamboo is missing and the remaining leaves are shredded and dry.

  I thought I’d do this post now and we’ll see how we are doing in a couple of months.

  

  Here’s the bamboo I had to cut out.  See how dry and shredded the leaves are?  They are a bluish color, very strange.

  

  Here’s the bamboo, now.  We assume it will send up more shoots but we don’t know if the existing bamboo will re-leaf.

  

  This is my edible ginger.  It is not normally variegated.  That happened during the storm.

  
  

  

  My fig.  It is in a pot and had been doing pretty well.  I have my fingers crossed!

  

  The banana and the orchid tree seem a little off kilter.

  

  Awwww, crap.  This is my datura.  It is really unhappy.

  

  This vine was doing so well, before.  It is  a flame vine and it hasn’t even bloomed yet! It was draping over the front facade of our house and was going to be quite the show!

  

  This tree was sold to us as a real lemon.  Ok, it isn’t, it seems to be an orange, but we’re not even sure we’ll ever get those oranges, it is doing so badly.  I have no idea why they didn’t fly off in the storm, either.

  

  Above is my handkerchief plant.  It was so lush and had tons of blooms on it, before!.

  

  Here’s the banana after I cut off the big one that went down.  Kinda ratty, don’t you think?

  We haven’t been through this kind of storm before, so we are no experts, but next time we are going to be ready with a heavy duty handtruck and move all the plants on the patio into a corner and if possible cover them with a tarp.  But the plants that were more exposed did worse, so whatever shelter we can give them, we will.

  We’ll also hose them off as soon as the storm passes.  In hindsight we realized that some of the damage was caused by the salt in the moisture, and if we had hosed them off, who knows -- they might have done better.

  Our neighbors shrug and say who could expect two storms like we had this year in ONE year!  So we hope next year we will get a pass, and that the storm season is over for us for this year. One thing I should have expected is that the palms did quite well.  They flap up and down and get whipped all over the place but don’t even look slightly affected by the storm.

  Below is a video of the front patio during a bit of the storm.

  A couple of months from now I’ll let you know how it’s going with all these plants. Wish me luck!

  

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