The 1-acre lot we built on had, for years, been community-owned and used as the fiesta site for Ambroa Parish. By the time we bought it, the lot had been abandoned for quite a while and most of it was covered with tall grass. The concrete bandstand was in poor condition and was surrounded by weeds and thorny vines. Click Here to see what the bandstand looked like in January 1998.

We postponed fixing up the bandstand but tried to clean up the area around it, which turned out to be impossible. The weeds were hiding what could be described as a small-scale dumpsite. The worst of it was a jillion broken bottles left by the fiesta bar concessions over the years. Marivi and her sister, Rosa, spent many hours of debris removing before giving it up as hopeless. We decided that the only practical solution would be to just cover the area with something.

When we overhauled the bandstand we poured cement over the area behind it, which was the most debris-ridden. The rest, beside the bandstand, we just ignored until recently, when we planted four small trees (3 palms and a magnolia) and covered the ground with about 20 yards of coarse pine bark. So the dump is still there but we won't see it anymore.