More Than a Gardener

Arturo, the gardener I wrote so glowingly about, abandoned us for a few weeks last month. It turns out that he has been working 6 days per week on Casa Piedra, the rock/stone house. Casa Piedra is one that we looked at before settling on Casita Naranja. Somebody bought Casa Piedra and has poured mucho buckos into it - they practically gutted the interior and have refinished it with beautiful hardwood, extended the terraces and the kitchen, built a guest house, put on a new roof, added a new driveway and covered carport, shored up the balcony, built a new fence, and will soon landscape the double lot. Arturo has helped the new owners with the fence, cement work, roof, and I don't know what all else.

Les was driving by one day and spotted Arturo in the yard of Casa Piedra. Arturo said he would stop by on Sunday of that week, his only day off. He did come by, explained about the phones not working up there and how he didn't have much time for anything else, but he did some gardening for us later that week, and then offered to fix the sagging awning over one of our front windows. (You might have noticed it if you have seen photos or video of our house - it even had a flower growing out of it.) It has been falling off since before we first saw the casita, and Les had braced it up with a tree trunk and a board so it wouldn't crash to the ground.



So last week, Les picked up Arturo, his son Alexis, and another helper named Tonio at 3 PM from Casa Piedra. They set to work ripping off the old awning, and then Tonio welded together some beams and they built a frame. The next day they put a roof on the awning and painted it. Looks pretty good!