Local Assistance

Normally I don't really believe in hiring people to do things that you can do yourself.  For instance, you can get a relatively cheap cleaning lady here (and many places abroad) to do your house/flat once a week or you could hire one to come every day and she will clean and cook your meals for you too.  While that would be nice, and as people say, help the local economy, it just feels a bit to bourgeois to me.  Instead I will live in filth until I find it too unbearable to handle and will then go on a two day cleaning and straightening spree (it takes me two days because I just can't clean for more than a couple hours at one time).

But recently it got to the point where I needed to call in the reinforcements.  I have a small strip in front of my house of various plants that were completely overwrought with weeds.  There was actually one weed that nearly reached the overhang above it (approximately 7 feet up).  I knew I was in deep when some pest control people came to spray for ants and they said that I should probably clean it up a bit.  I asked what was a weed, I've never been really good at identifying weeds in my native land let alone a foreign place, and they basically pointed to everything except 2-3 plants.  I kind of knew it was bad, but was just trying to play dumb foreigner.  Now that it was specifically pointed out to me, I realized that I had to do something about it.

There were a number of prickly weeds in there too that they told me to watch out for, so I figured that I would have to get some gloves.  Well, that would take at least a week of me procrastinating before I would be able to get gloves, regardless if there is actually a home improvement center a mere 5 minutes away.

I was finally getting to the point where I starting to get uncomfortable about the amount weeds when a little, old Trini man came to my door and said, "Jou need a bit of cleaning up wit d weeds here?  I work in d complex an can do it for you."  I'm trying to write phonetically so you might pick up a bit on the accent.  I said, "Umm, yeah I guess I do need to get on this.  How much would you charge?"  He said $40 (which when you convert to US, is about a little less than $7).  Being a bit of a miser about these types of things (as previously mentioned) I had to think about it for a second or two.  After thinking about weeding in approximately 90 degree temperatures, I decided that it would be $7 well spent.

In all honesty, even though I can't prove it, I think my neighbor probably said something to him to ask me because that guy is out there all the time cleaning and sweeping  his parking space, washing his car, tending to his little patch of plants, etc.  I guess when you pay as much as these folks are for the apartments, they want them to look nice.  Even though he has a tree that is planted in a cardboard box, which I never said anything about, I'll accept that my space was getting a bit out of hand.

Anyway, the little Trini gardener said that he couldn't do it that day, but would be back next time he saw my car in it's spot.  I week passed and I still didn't see the little guy.  Fortunately I didn't pay him ahead of time and I was about to actually go and buy gloves yesterday (the first day of my Christmas break) and I saw him coming into the parking lot.  I asked if he was going to be able to do my space and he said that he would do it on Sunday.  Whew!  I almost thought I was going to have to do some work there.

This morning I awoke to the pleasant hacking sounds of weeds whittled down to size by a cutlass (a machete of sorts) and the digging of pitchforks into the small swath of land I call a garden.  I feel good about helping out the local economy.  I feel even better that I didn't have to do this work in the heat.  But I feel best about being able to play up all the hard work I had to do to clean it up "from the prior tenants leaving it in such poor condition" when Angie comes down and impress her with my incredible gardening skills I inherited from my mother.  Now, if I could only prevent her from reading this for the next couple of weeks.