The waterlillies are in. Three weeks ago Charly, Ramon, and I ventured to Volcan to purchase them from Carla, who has a series of beautiful gardens there and a variety of sizes and colors of waterlillies. We settled on three: a large pink, a large purple, and a small white. The white is a juvenile and hasn't settled in yet, but the pink and purple are thriving. The pink, however, closes by noon. Ergo, attached is a picture of the purple.I was worried about them because we had another spate of--you guessed it--bad weather. This time it was rain AND wind--strong, strong wind. Larry observed a woman being blown off the sidewalk and into the street in downtown Boquete! The electricity was out for five days throughout much of the entire province, but, miraculously, we were without only part of one day and just sporadically, for up to ten minutes at a time, the rest. So we employed the trusty generator only once this time around. All phones were out, but our Internet survived. However, the wind blew rain in around windows and through what apparently were tiny cracks in the concrete at certain spots, resulting in some rivulets down the inside walls in several places. We fared well compared to lots of folks, though. Roofs were blown off even in David, signs were down, roads were blocked by falling trees, etc. And we learned that we do not live in the windiest part of Boquete; that distinction belongs to Jaramillo, where there was widespread damage. The garden suffered badly. Many shrubs were denuded of their leaves, some were blown over, and several were blown right out of the ground. We've been in the recovery process for over a week now. As I write, Juvenal is on a 30-foot extension ladder siliconing around the upper windows in the greatroom. Now the rains have subsided and the usual February winds are here, drying things out in a matter of hours. After all the rain we've had, I spent the morning watering.
Doc/Charly/Ramon were without electricity for all five days. It came at a very inconvenient time for them because they were nearing the culmination of housetraining the two cockers. The weather was such that there was simply no going outdoors for long stretches, so that endeavor was set back. Moreover, only two days prior to the storm they had acquired a third dog, a golden retriever puppy (Finnegan). Doc reports that they went through approxiately 25 rolls of paper towels in the span of a week. When things finally settled down, we all looked and felt like refugees of the war in Bosnia.
On the heels of the storm, Dan, the American vet, and his wife Cindy arrived next door. They had had a rough flight (also weather-related, I assume) and Cindy appeared near death from prolonged air sickness. They managed to get in through the electric gate, late at night, but awoke to no electricity. The storm had brought a tree down on a power line to the house. Apparently it had hung on by a thread until they were safely behind the electronically locked gate, so they awoke trapped on the property. Mold had covered everything inside the house, and they had no gas for hot water. Being unable to locate the manual key to the gate, Larry and Dan finally broke into the controls with needle-nosed pliers and set them free. Gas was ordered, and George eventually came around to fix the electric wire connection and chop down the offending tree. Cindy, still looking pallid, set about ridding the house of mold and cleaning out the refrigerator which had gone putrid during the flood, while Larry and I departed for David to purchase new tires. On the third stop we finally found the all-terrain tires we were looking for, but--it goes without saying--they had only two of them. We bought those two and returned the next day to purchase the newly-arrived two more, mindful of the Doc/Charly/Ramon experience of having ordered bar stools and, when they arrived, having paid for them but having delayed their transport until the next day because their vehicle was filled with groceries. When they returned the next day, their barstools had been sold to someone else. Forget getting your money back. The entire process of ordering and waiting weeks for them to arrive started anew.
Over the weekend, Dan and Cindy got settled in. On Monday morning, early, his veterinary clients began showing up at the hastily-put-together clinic in the garage. The ensuing barks, yowls, and whimperings set our dogs off, so we've had a noisy week. Among the Monday afternoon patients were Raffy and Matty, the cockers, due for spaying and neutering, and Finny, whom Dan said was eligible for a general looking over. All three were headquartered at our house most of the afternoon as Dan, who was running late, took them one by one. I had forgotten how much trouble puppies can get into. At least two of us had to be tending them at all times, and, even then, they managed to dig up a substantial portion of the backyard and drag innumerable personal possessions out of the most unlikely places.
We've been operating largely on the backup water tank and pump for several days now while they overhaul the Palo Alto water system. And we can barely get in and out of our road due to construction trucks and supplies devoted to improving the horrendous road up to Doc and Charly and Ramon's. (This is a mystery. The main road to downtown has huge segments still unpaved and pot-holed from the flood, while their road leads to only a few houses. One of them must belong to a relative of the president, we decided.) Randy and Mary Ellen returned from Bocas to find that the storm had blown in around the doors of their upper patio in their bedroom, had soaked through cracks in the floor, and had destroyed the sheet rock ceiling they had installed just before leaving for the renovation of a garage below their bedroom into a greatroom. Randy was so mad that he kicked the vacuum cleaner and broke his toe.
Not a dull moment yet.
