Busily lazy Easter Saturday

Easter in Puerto Rico is celebrated all week long. Just witness the unusual crowds and long line to check out counters at the grocery stores and beaches - judging by coloring - filled mostly by the natives

Playa in El Combate

instead of predominatly blond surfers that descent on them at this time of year otherwise. No, the surfers did not go home, they follow the "swell" and congregate always where the highest waves are right now, while the natives, in whole - usually large - families favor the gentler waved ones.

Playa in El Combate

So during Easter week I try not to compete for space on the beaches either with the natives , the surfers or with weekend tourists: most of them shall leave on Monday, latest Tuesday, and I'll have plenty of beach space to myself then, as usual.

El Combate beach

During Easter week I do chores: yesterday I cleaned the house,



which is the chore I intensely dislike and - to be truthful - tend to behave like a slob,

when I do not have a competent housekeeper, or at least a cleaning lady, and right now I dont have.


You can imagine that- when the cleaning was done - I could hardly refrain from checking in the mirror whether an aura od sainthood appeared over my head - so noble I felt. ;-)

Today I was less ambitious. I started with my kitchen gardening: hanging out the bags of sprouts outside in the shade so that they would green somewhat, harvesting half of a tray of buckwheat greens, removing old compost mat with the remaining tchach of roots, filling in a new compost, covering it - densely - with soaked unhulled sunflower seeds and watering.

I finished the kitchen gardening chores with thinning my basil container - carefully: replanting most of them into the flowerbed for my landlords or a tenant that might come after me (I am moving again, next weekend, to the rainforest).

Then it was time for breakfast



somewhat Easterlike (ham, eggs):




After breakfast I took on another delightful - like gardening - chore of doing laundry al fresco. My laundry room is basically outdoors: a closet type space with a washer and dryer and doors opening to the side yard.


There I hang a picturesque (I think) clothes line between the wall next to my laundry room and the neighbor's chain link fence


and enjoy doing laundry, hanging wet clothes, watching them sway in the breeze and then picking them up all smelling sun and fresh air.


I have to admit, though, that Puerto Rico is not Italy, and mine is not a usual behavior in my neighbourhood of $500 000 + beachfront villas and $ 250000+ beachfront condos.

I know that hanging laundry outside instead of using a dryer shocks some people and I do try to be understanding to the insecurities of the nouveau riches, or nouveau-would-like-to-be-riches, who, unlike old money in America , or old titles (nobility) in Europe, fear being extravagant in anything but a show of their - true or pretended - purchasing power.


But I would not succumb to their fear that anybody, perhaps, might think of them - or of me - as a creature unworthy of living in a posh neighborhood.

As a compromise between sensitivity to their insecurities and my firm belief that doing laundry al fresco is not only great fun but also both economically and environmentally sound, I hang my line and my laundry out for only a few hours a week, even if it happens on an Easter Saturday, if I feel like it.


OK, enough of that childish "I dare you" statement of unashamedly simple domesticity.
It's time for lunch:




- on the patio, of course - the weather's great, 82 and sunny, time for enjoying the sea and garden views and for watching cats roaming in the garden.


I wonder if they think they are on an egg hunt?

No, their usual lizard hunt is more likely.