Fire And Water And Green Beans
Sorry about the lack of posting of late as I really wanted to go for a 'diary' feel for this latest gig, but I sit here with four itching-swollen bug bites, two on each arm, stopping to scratch between commas. Translated it means that the past few days have been nonstop work moving to the new house and making it livable, with me falling into bed at the end of the day.
Yesterday I had a list of more things to do inside, but somehow I wound up outside all day digging on the canal. It's finished now, in the sense that I'm not going to re-route it and the water runs freely all the way across the property. I also burned stuff in the back yard. Yes, I have gone native.
When I had first arrived in Costa Rica I marveled at the fires. I'm too young to remember this kind of thing happening much in the US, but in the days before leaf blowers and big plastic bags and not having to haul your trash to the dump, on reflection I'm sure it was the same. Looking out across the valley on any given day I could see a dozen or so plumes of smoke, attended and unattended. I'd even seen them 'cut the grass' on the side of the freeway by setting fire to it.
The fire pretty much lasted all day, smoldering during rain showers, and finally with a dose of gasoline to reinvigorate it, on into the night.
As we burned more stuff I got a sense of how much 'more' we are going to need to burn, especially now that we're having rains and the fire is slow.
Good news- I have coffee plants! 
I don't know enough about picking but I know that one of the locals made deliveries to Amigos last week of fresh batch of home grown, which I bought and it wasn't bad at all. To my eyes these look ripe for the taking but I'll have to ask around. If I can make it all work we'll have some really special Irish coffee.
Today I return for a final time to the old house and uninstall the suicide shower. I don't really need it but the vieja is insisting. We left far too many things in Costa Rica for her satisfaction and she's determined nobody gets to use our leftovers. The new place has a more 'robust' suicide shower, which means I don't get little drops of cold water on me even when it's supposed to be 'hot' water, and, wonder of wonders, the ground wire is just dangling there ungrounded.
