Ready on deck

Shawn wants to have everything in line for his return trip, so today the deck wood arrived -- lots of it.

Ref had sent me by the lumberyard last week just to get my eyes popping at the price -- I had a suspicion, but not specific numbers.

And I can report that though the kind of wood -- ipe -- is pronounced ee-pay, as in "pay," the cost might also justify a rhyme with "yipe."

It's actually tabebuia wood, according to the Agriculture Department's Forest Product Labs, and is called ipe by the Brazilians. It's also sometimes called Brazilian cherry or Brazilian walnut.

But do a little research and you find the names don't stop there. It's amapa in Mexico; Cortez in Costa Rica, Honduras and Nicaragua; Guayacan in Panama; Guayacan polvillo in Colombia; Flor Amarillo in Venezuela; Greenhart in Surinam; Madera negra in Ecuador; Tahuari in Peru; and Lapacho negro in Paraguay and Argentina.

Obviously it grows widely in the hemisphere, which is why we got it: renewable resource, and all that. Besides, it never needs sealing (it's actually too dense to absorb sealer), it's weatherproof and pest-proof without chemical treatment, it doesn't splinter, it has a fire rating equal to concrete and steel and it's incredibly heavy and hard (you can't nail it; you have to drill holes and screw it down).

Well, if you can't nail the plank, nail the buyer.