Stones and Sticks
Staying busy and hopeful during the pandemic
While we were secluded at our Costa Rican hotel in the early months of the Covid pandemic, Mark and I had to keep ourselves busy. We could only lounge around so much! Mark thought this would be an opportunity to work on some projects (yes again!) while the hotel was shut down.
What could possibly be left to do after completing a total hotel remodel just over a year ago?
Not much, just a few aesthetic improvements here and there.
Stones
One of our villas had a tiny plunge pool – let’s call it a hole in the ground. And plunge was all you could do - jump straight in, hit the bottom and pop out. No swimming, no lounging. Just dip. In and out. Even worse, the pool had no stairs or ladder, so it required some upper body strength to get out of it!
I love pools, but I hated that pool. We ‘inherited’ this tiny plunge pool when we bought the hotel and now it was time for a change.
Since the villa also had an in-ground hot tub, Mark and I decided we would remove the pool and plant a garden in its place.
The pool had a concrete and stone ledge about 2 feet wide around its edge so we couldn’t just fill in the hole with dirt and plant some plants. We needed to remove the concrete and stone at least 18 inches below ground level to make room for the plants to grow roots.
We needed to hammer! I couldn’t have been more excited. It would give us a project and I’d get to hammer something!
So, with sledgehammer in tow, I hammered. A few concrete chips flew.
Mark hammered. A few more chips flew.
We alternated sledgehammering that dang concrete for a long time with very little progress. We had only a small pile of concrete ‘stones’ for all our hammering. We were getting nowhere fast. We had all the pandemic time in the world, but I didn’t want to be spending all our time hammering small stones. And now we both had blisters!
The next day, we asked our maintenance guys Alex and Flaco to give it a try. They are much stronger than we are so I thought they would have the concrete broken up in no time! After almost a full day of hammering, they had made only a few more inches of progress. The sledgehammering wasn’t working.
We realized we were going to need to jackhammer this concrete. But where would we get a jackhammer during a pandemic? Flaco said there was a guy in town who rented power tools including jackhammers. Great! We got it and off we went!
That jackhammer made the job much faster, and we were able to break up the concrete into a big pile of stones! We backfilled the pool with the broken concrete stones and ample amounts of dirt and planted a nice garden at the entrance of the villa.
Sticks
Our next project was inspired by a hotel owned by friends of ours in Drake Bay, Costa Rica. When guests arrived at their hotel, they entered through a tunnel-like arch of beautiful hibiscus flowers. When Mark and I visited them, we thought it was beautiful.
We wanted to have a cute, flowery archway somewhere too!
We decided the best place was on the gravel walkway leading to one of our treehouses. It was already lined with hibiscus bushes 3 feet high on one side. That treehouse was also located below another treehouse on the mountainside above it and an archway would provide a little privacy from the treehouse view above.
Our idea was to plant a line of hibiscus on the other side of the walkway and then let the two sides grow towards each other overhead to form that beautiful tunnel-like arch.
But how do you plant hibiscus in gravel? And where during Covid was I supposed to get hibiscus? In the U.S. I could go to Home Depot or a garden center and grab a packet of seeds or starter plants. Nope. Not in Costa Rica during a pandemic.
When in doubt, ask a Costa Rican. So again, I went back to my all-knowing maintenance guy Flaco.
He told me to dig a little trench along the other side of the walkway. In the gravel? Fill it with a little dirt and clip some little sticks from the current hibiscus bushes about 6-8 inches long. Ah, ha? Then he said, “Jefa, just put two sticks in the ground in the shape of an X every 4 inches or so, and they’ll grow.” Huh? No way.
I thought he was pulling my leg. Teasing me to see if I’d do it. I questioned him to make sure I understood his Spanish. With no roots? Just stick twigs in the ground? As I mimicked back to him what I thought he meant with the shape of the X, he nodded his head and said sí!
Really? It’ll grow? I asked. “Jefa”, he said, “anything will grow in Costa Rica!” Um, ok. What else did I have to do? I needed to pass pandemic time and sitting around stewing about the state of the world’s situation was not productive. So, plant Xs it was!
Mark began digging a narrow trench along the side of the path. He cleared the gravel, dug a trench in the hard red clay, and filled it with organic soil. As I clipped sticks from the existing hibiscus for planting, I kept thinking that there was NO WAY that this was going to work. What did I have to lose?
For the next week or so, I’d eat breakfast, haul my backpack down to the walkway, and spend a few hours planting sticks. I made my way down the path with my Xs as Mark continued trenching the side. By the time I was done I had 180 sticks shaped like Xs sticking out of the ground about 3 inches.
As I surveyed my work, I again told Mark that I thought Flaco was pulling our leg. When I showed it to Flaco, and he said, Sí Jefa! Buen trabajo. We will see.
Because we were between dry season and rainy season, we didn’t want to take our chances on getting rain. Mark made an irrigation system by running a hose along the length of the line of sticks and drilling small holes in it every 6 inches or so.
I had no idea if or even when these little sticks would grow. But I was proud of my little plantings. Each day, we’d water, and let the sun nourish them.
I sure hoped they’d grow.
We also had no idea if or even when this global pandemic would end. All we could do was hope.
These sticks became my symbol of hope for better days ahead.
I know you want to know if the sticks grew! When we returned to the hotel in early February 2025 after 2+ years away, and almost 5 years since I planted them, I was pleasantly surprised! The sticks I planted are now more than 4 feet tall. There was a beautiful hibiscus flower blooming that day, my symbol of hope.
Thanks for reading! Please like this post, share with a friend or leave a comment! I’d appreciate any or all of these! Pura vida!
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Aren't the tropics great for growing plants? Paul used to say - you could put a broomstick in the ground and it would grow. And your hibiscus -- living proof! Beautiful Marlo.