Concrete mesas

Posted on by Felipe Zapata

banana

MESA MEANS table in Spanish. I now have two mesas in the yard where damnable bananas long held sway.

The photo above was taken on a nice summer day. You see two stands of banana. One is just this side of the black-rock Alamo Wall, and the other one, higher, is beyond. A third, which abuts the house itself, is not visible.

More on it below.

As recently noted in the post dubbed The winter scalp, banana trees, which I stupidly planted years back when they were cute little babies, had become the curse of my life.

I have taken concrete action against two of the three. The ground in which they grew has been covered with concrete and stone, which is raised to form two mesas.

I could have simply covered them with concrete and stone at ground level, but the two mesas give me places to set things, maybe artsy-fartsy stuff to give drama to the yard.

Below are photos of the work:

No. 1
Removing banana remnants with machete and pickax.
No. 2
Early stages of mesa No. 1.
head
Work done. No more freaking banana trees here! It’s 60 centimeters tall.

Now I need to find a stone or metal sculpture to dress it up.

DSCF0399

Long, long ago, I planted a little banana tree in this corner against the house. It grew high and multiplied. I snapped this photo one dark night many years back.

It grew and grew and grew until it was impossible to walk into this corner or even see the corner, so it had to be eliminated.

To wit:

shot 1
Workman with pickax uprooting banana bases and roots.

That big aloe vera bush, left side of photo just above, was not even planted when I took the night photo.

two
Second mesa just lacking fill at this point.
rubble
Interior is filled with rubble from God knows where.
casa
All done. This one is larger than the other. Also needs a sculpture.

And that concludes another construction caper. The toil spanned four six-hour days, and the total price for material and labor was 2,450 pesos, about 135 bucks. I tossed in a 200-peso tip because that’s the kind of guy I am.

I’ve loved stone and mountains all my life, and now — at last — I’m surrounded by both. Life is good.

32 thoughts on “Concrete mesas”

  1. And, years in the future, archaeologists will wonder why sarcophagi were constructed for bananas.

    Saludos,

    Kim G
    CDMX, México
    Where the photo the housemate sent of our snowy yard this morning convinced us that being here was the right thing to do.

    Liked by 1 person

              1. Don Cuevas: Yeah, just moments after I wrote that it was WordPress, I noticed the same thing as I was writing a comment on a non-WordPress blog. So, it’s my Chrome. Chrome is my main man.

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          2. Hahaha…the auto-correct on my Mexican cell phone tries to turn all messages in English into some form of extremely weird Spanish, where all the words are spelled correctly but the “sentences” don’t make any sense. It’s an uphill battle and I’m not sure I’m winning it. Saludos!

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            1. Kim: Both my wife and I have Mexican cell phones. Mine is low-end, a Dumbphone, and hers is high-end, a Smartphone. Neither tries change English into Spanish. One wonders what it is you have. There’s probably a place to stop that in there somewhere.

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              1. I’m pretty good with this stuff. It’s supposedly an “unlocked” phone, but it’s still got a load of Telcel “crapware” installed. And I can’t change the keyboard, though I did install Swiftkey, which is better, but is now thoroughly confused by my bilinguality. Oh well. It’s best the machines don’t get TOO smart. Saludos!

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  2. Yes! We have no bananas!
    We have no bananas today!
    We’ve string beans and onions,
    Cabbages and scallions,
    And all kinds of fruit and say;
    We have an old-fashioned tomato;
    Long Island potato;
    But, yes! We have no bananas!
    We have no bananas today!

    Liked by 2 people

      1. Speaking of comedy, your line in the original post, “You see two stands of banana.” brings a memory of a puerile boys’ joke. But I’d be too embarrassed to post it here.

        Saludos,
        Don Cuevas

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  3. “I have taken concrete action against two of the three.”

    Two things I love in writing: challenging words and well-massaged puns. You shy from the former, but I am always pleased to find these Easter eggs planted in your prose.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Señor Cotton: I don’t shy from the former. I’m simply too ill-educated to know any of your ten-dollar, Oregonian, words. I’m a simple Georgia Cracker.

      As for the “taking concrete action,” that was an accident. It was only after I’d written it that I noticed its other aspect. Again, just a simple Georgia redneck.

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  5. Ms. Shoes: Having no clue who is Edward James, I followed your link, and I see that James was “an eccentric millionaire.”

    I may qualify under one of those descriptions, but not both.

    I would very much like to be a millionaire.

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      1. He was an eccentric Brit expat in Mexico, who conceived and developed “Las Pozas”. Located near Xilitla, state of San Luis Potosí.

        Saludos,
        Don Cuevas

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        1. Don Cuevas: Interesting shot. I went to Los Pozos once about eight or so years ago. Just there a couple of hours. Didn’t see anything about him, however. Pozos is too isolated and too sparsely populated to be very appealing, I think. Others, obviously, disagree.

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          1. Felipe, there’s a Mineral de Pozos, a semi-deserted mining town in the state of Guanajuato. It’s become somewhat trendy, B&Bs, etc. If you were there, you wouldn’t see anything much at all of Edward James and his work.

            Saludos,
            Don Cuevas

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  6. Some of those banana roots are still down there, like the telltale heart, biding their time. If they can’t push through the concrete they’ll just creep over a couple of feet and pop through the dirt there. 🙂

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  7. I think the word banco, not mesa, better describes your stone works. But of course you may call them whatever you like.

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    1. Clete: Banco would indicate a bench, and I don’t view it as a place to sit. Mesa, on the other, is table, a place to put things, which is what I aim to do. Plus, those flattop mountains in the American West are called mesas, not bancos.

      I think mesa is the better option in this instance.

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