Blue arches and white lines

Ok, this will be the last thing about the house for a while. But painting these arches blue was a big step forward for me. Yeah, I found the blue paint in the basement. I'm still playing around with what color to paint those little inverted eyebrow pieces on the columns. The former owner painted just about everything white, white, white. I found some brilliant rose colored paint (again in the basement) and started using that for the little scoopy places....but we decided that was really over the top. So we're going to fall back to either white or terracotta.

Trying on these new colors is sort of like trying on new names for what I do and who I am. I'm not really sure any more. I've stayed in the lines for a long time and felt safe there. Lines are awfully handy to have around. When we first got here at the end of October, the rainy season was just winding down. All the white stripes on the two lane highway between here and Puerto Vallarta had been washed away. Driving that road through the jungle, especially at night -- you realize how much you rely on stripes down the middle and stripes along the side to make you feel safe and secure. Everyone knows exactly what part of the road is theirs. I feel like I'm taking my half out of the middle these days and any minute the transito police are going to pull me over and ask me just what I think I'm doing.

Well, this is what I'm doing: I'm painting my arches blue, my front gates and iron work deep purple, and my patio furniture orange. I'm pulling up mature hibiscus plants (the iguanas ate the blossoms anyway) and planting bouganvillea instead: purple and red and yellow. And I'm going to keep digging in that basement to see what else turns up.