My Million-Dollar Idea of the Day

 

My Million-Dollar Idea of the Day

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Years ago, a friend, I don’t remember who, told me that every day we have a million-dollar idea but that they skim by so quickly that we seldom catch one.

I don’t remember which long-ago friend posited this preposterous notion. I do remember that I said, “Hmmm. Um hmmm,” while nodding my head, wide-eyed.

I never forgot the notion. Now and then I catch a nodding acquaintance with one of my million-dollar ideas. Hence, the following.

Nostalgia is big these days. Grossly misplaced nostalgia, if you ask me, since I lived some of it and know the reality. However, nostalgia sells.

Conveniently, medical oversight seems to suddenly have fallen by the wayside.

At the same time, people, that’s you and me, gang, are bombarded with miracle cures, ancient, modern, invented, and imagined.

Bring these three threads together and you have it. Or, rather, I have it. I propose to revive the old-time medicine wagon and drift from village to village hawking my own brand of snake oil. Brilliant, eh?

What’s in the bottle of Cures-What-Ails-You? It doesn’t really matter, does it? I figure the base of most snake oil is alcohol. Here where I live the cheapest, most easily acquired alcohol is from the cane plant. Grind up some red chilies and one or two secret ingredients, and, no, I ain’t telling, because then they wouldn’t be secret ingredients, would they? Decant the liquid into old-timey blue bottles with a cork, and hit the road.

My friend Kathy’s husband Richard is a renowned retired doctor and he is willing to come up with the appropriate language for my spiel. Okay, he may not be renowned yet but by the time I finish my tour, he will be, yes, he will be renowned.

One product cures all, I figure. Richard can come up with the appropriate prescription, loosely called prescription, perhaps taking a page from homeopathy. Say, a drop for this ailment, two drops for that, and a slug for the really hard cases.

Brilliant, right? Do I figure to get rich? Well, no, not exactly. I’ve never been enamored of wealth, more’s the pity. Real wealth takes money to begin the process to generate more money. I have none. Wealth requires wealthy friends. Ditto. In today’s world, wealth takes devious manipulation through the internet. Ditto, again.

However, would I ever have a good time. I can easily imagine clip-clopping over the backroads with my mule and colorful-as-a-field-of-wildflowers medicine wagon, stopping by both isolated homes where I might trade a bottle of Cure for a meal or a clutch of eggs and in main-street squares, opening the back of my wagon, setting up a box on which to stand so I can see over the heads of the crowds and hawking my wares.

At best, I might make expenses.

As with all my other million-dollar ideas, you may have this one for free. You may get rich. I am sure to have fun.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

September 4, 2025

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When A Weed is More Than a Weed

 

               When A Weed is More Than a Weed

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My friend Vala from Harlem told me about her pitiful yield from her garden, hardly enough for a salad, in this summer of hail, flooding rains and stultifying heat. She said she mostly grew purslane and bindweed.

“Purslane,” I got excited. “Purslane is a wonder vegetable. You can eat it. It’s much like spinach only tastier and full of good nutrition. Here’s how I fix it. I steam it, add butter, salt and pepper and drizzle on a little vinegar. It’s delicious.”

Vala asked Larry to go out amongst the bindweed and gather her a mess of purslane. She followed my directions. “I love it,” she reported. “Larry said it was better than he thought it would be but he wouldn’t want it every meal.”

Nor would I, Larry, nor would I. I get hungry for it now and then but only eat it every couple months, or when I can find it. I don’t happen to have any in my yard.

When I was growing up on the farm, we called it pigweed. It grows prolifically. Here, there and everywhere.

A hundred years ago when I lived in Great Falls, a woman named Mary Missy taught me how to cook pigweed. I mean purslane. She also taught me how to use comfrey, another weed, as tea and as a compress for wounds. I wish I could have known Mary longer. I’ve never lost her memory.

This morning at the market in town I bought a bundle of purslane. It’s not on the shelf every day but I can find it often enough to keep me satisfied. I steamed the whole bunch and ate a large bowl of the greens. Tomorrow I’ll scramble purslane with eggs.

Since purslane is a common market vegetable in this area, called verdolagas, I asked Leo how his family cooks verdolagas and discovered that my way is boring.

First they fry costillas, which are bite-sized bits of pork rib (or one can use any meat), and set the costillas aside. Next chop tomatoes, onion, garlic and chilis of your choice in the blender with water.  Pour that into the skillet which fried the costillas. Reduce the broth, stirring frequently. Add the costillas and verdolagas to the broth (salsa roja) until the meat is heated and the vegetable is tender. Doesn’t that sound yummy?

My next thought, now that I’m jumped out of my boring (but still delicious) purslane rut is to try the costillas and verdolagas with salsa verde, made with tomatillos. Mushrooms? A bit of chopped carrot? Potato? In tacos. Oh, I can almost taste them just talking about them. Enchiladas with cheese and beans. Raw in salad. Hmmm, tomato sandwich with purslane?

My purslane-pigweed-verdolagas cup runneth over.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

August 28, 2025

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Why My Bread Didn’t Rise

 

Why My Bread Didn’t Rise

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I have amazing mechanical skills. If I contemplate a problem long enough, generally I can figure out how to fix it. When I was a very young mother and my daughter was in diapers, back when diapers were squares of cotton cloth, my washing machine broke down.

If you’ve ever washed 80 diapers by hand, you will understand why I lay on the floor beneath my wringer washer, the kind with the tub up on legs with a wringer attached to the rim of the tub, and looked and thought and looked and thought.

With only the most rudimentary tools, pliers and two screwdrivers and a couple wrenches, I took something apart down there that looked broken, fixed it, put it back together with only two small extra parts, filled the tub with water heated on the wood stove and washed a huge load of baby clothes.

Christmas Eve, year after year, I’ve spent hours on the floor putting together children’s toys made in China, directions written in Chinese.

For years my ability to take things apart and put them back together more beautifully made my house payments.

Mechanically, I’m good. Electronically, not so hot. At electronics, I’m rubbish. Electronics turn my brain into 3-days-in-the-pan, overcooked, congealed oatmeal.

The other day I finally got my new internet service installed. I was excited. I’d been piggy-backing off a generous neighbor’s services, gratefully. I got my computer, my kindle, my tablet all online. No problem. I know how to do that.

However, my printer refused to spit out a page of print. My computer refused to even recognize my printer. What is this, a grade school snit amongst electronic equipment?

I’ve a fairly new printer which I had managed to install with no problems and only minor irritation and sweat. I followed the directions. I should be able to find this problem and fix it. Right?

After a couple hours, I quit. Had a sleepless night, trying to figure it out while lying awake in bed. That never works but I keep trying, which I think is the definition of insanity.

The following day, with my daughter on the phone 2500 miles away, we worked another couple hours. No go.

Interspersed with my futile attempts to make my printer work, I mixed a batch of dough for bread. Baking bread is a mechanical process. I’m an excellent baker.

The dough didn’t feel right. Bread dough is sensitive. It responds to emotional atmosphere. I know that dough felt my frustrations and acted accordingly. Finally, it had risen enough that I could form loaves, which I almost threw away but, reluctantly, just in case, put in the oven.

One last attempt trying to hook up my printer. Remember the definition of insanity? When I quit, I was screaming. I was screaming for ice cream. I grabbed my neighbor, Crin, and talked her into sharing ice cream with guava sauce I’d made that morning. (Guava is not so sensitive.)

Not being totally devoid of brains, in defeat, I asked for help. My neighbor Josue is trained in electronics and robotics. Go figure. You are right. I should have started with “HELP”.

I picked up a book and sat in a chair with my back to Josue. I hate someone looking over my shoulder when I am working. Ten minutes later, Josue asked me to come test the printer. Ten minutes! I was immensely grateful, but, a tiny contrary part of me wanted to brain him. Ten minutes!

My bread was not light and fluffy and full-sized, but Crin convinced me to keep it for toast. I gave her one loaf and kept the other.

This morning I made a batch of Grateful Bread for Josue.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

August 21, 2025

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It’s Pretty To Think That Way

 

               It’s Pretty To Think That Way

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Warning: Merrily mixed metaphors ahead.

I do like weather. While some might talk about the weather to keep conversation on a superficial basis, I talk about weather because weather is vital.

What a topsy-turvy year this is for weather. Montana. Mexico. Not much different down here where I live in Jalisco. In other words, it’s an unpredictable mess. I follow eastern Montana weather closely thanks to my daughter, Montana friends and the Havre Weekly.

I can’t help but wonder if this is the kind of weather set up, with all the surprising rain, that prompted the infamous flood of pamphlets that lured homesteaders to such inhospitable locations as eastern Montana with the promise that “Rain follows the plow!”

From our standpoint of distance and history, we might wonder how anybody could have entertained such unfounded, unscientific, unweatherific, illogical, irrational nonsense. But believe it they did, plows and kitchen tools and children in wagons, farmers along with plenty of neophytes left both workable land and inner cities by the hundreds, struggled across what later became several States, built drafty cabins or dirt hovels and plowed the prairies and waited for the rain which never fell and never fell and never fell.

Thinking that if one plowed the plot, dropped in seed, and waited, rain would follow, reminds me of the fairy tale of the Shoemaker and the Elves.

I do like fairy tales. When I had my little workshop in Poulsbo, Washington, I liked to prepare my worktable or station for the next day, set it up with cut patterns or springs ready to tie or whatever the next step required, in hopes that the elves might appear in the night hours and finish the job. In hopes, tongue in cheek. Every morning I had a good laugh when the elves neglected to show. Not even one time.

The difference is that I knew it was a fairy tale, I wasn’t a shoemaker and knew the elves would not come but used the story as self-entertainment.

Not for one moment will I try to tell you that I can’t fall for my own fairy tale. Just a year ago this month, I began preparing for a move ten miles west and further into the mountains and part of my reasoning, this is true, is that it rains more there than here at the Rancho. It does. The water is better, not so super-saturated with minerals and the water system is more reliable. It is so.

Blithely, I managed to ignore other “weather” signs. Some I couldn’t see until I lived under, around and inside them. My decision to move back I made entirely on my own, based on storm clouds mounting on the horizon of history if not geography.

I do like weather. I’m crap at reading weather signs, especially in these turbulent conditions and interesting times.

Rain does not follow the plow. I won’t set out flowerpots with seeds and wait for the cloud elves to drop water. I have pared down my garden considerably, to herbs and a few flowers because flowers are important. I will gladly drag hose from pot to pot on the days when no rain falls. I will revel when the rain drops from the lowering sky.

When I wander into fantasy fairy weather land, I will remember my Aunt Mary telling me, “It’s pretty to think that way.”

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

August 14, 2025

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The Horse Runs Faster to the Barn

 

The Horse Runs Faster to the Barn

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Having all my stuff back at the Rancho doesn’t mean I’m settled down and done.

There is a lot to be said for staying put forever. Stability. Knowing your surroundings and, whether or not they are close friends, knowing those around you intimately. Comfort.  A sense of permanence that rolling stones don’t get to have. Moss. I like moss.

It took me two months to move to Oconahua. It took twelve days for Leo to move me back, complete with bamboo, herbs and my little dog, Lola. There must be a moral or a meaning to this story, if only I can figure it out. The horse runs faster.

We’ve worked hard to get my belongings back into some kind of order. We? Me point, Leo grunt. Leo has been a trooper, putting up with my extra jobs along with taking care of several other houses and yards on the Rancho.

In at least one instance, I got a little carried away with creating spaces differently arranged than when I lived here previously. The differences are part of my fun. Poor Lola. I moved her dog dwelling closer to the front door. That night we had a rather daunting storm. Water everywhere. Soaked doggy bedding.  Back to the tried and true and dry.

I’m bleeding money but that is all part of moving, necessary expenses.

My plants made the move without going into severe shock. Constant rains help. I’m loving them and they are loving me.

My house is in order, bodega mostly settled, patio sort of sorted. The horse is in the barn, so to speak, munching oats, or soon will be.

Today I made a nice batch of granola. Harvested a clutch of limes from my key lime tree and juiced them for the freezer. I’ve ingredients on the counter to make a pizza for dinner. It’s an ordinary day, a restful day, a day of peace.

Now I’m off to mop, mop, mop and then to flop, flop, flop. An ordinary day.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

August 7, 2025

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I didn’t go to kindergarten.

 

               I didn’t go to kindergarten.

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Since we didn’t have kindergarten in the rural school in which I began my education, I missed the chance to learn everything I needed to know in one fell swoop of a year.

I have had to learn everything I needed to know the hard way, life’s lessons over time. I’m still enrolled in that particular school.

Smashed flat beneath a bundle of notebooks I no longer need but hang onto for looking back at names and memories, is a small bundle of flyers for plays at the theater I helped build from nothing but scratch and desire. I’m quite proud of that chapter in my life.

What I want to do, without the expense and fuss of frames, is to paste these flyers to a piece of card stock or something similar and preserve the fronts, crumples and dings and all, and hang my theatre memories in my bodega sewing room where I actually have usable wall space.

When I was in first and second grades, art consisted pretty much of paper and coloring crayons. Pitiful, but, hey, it’s a start. I’m not sure about the best materials to use for my “art” project, but I know who has the answers.

My friend Crinita, who will be here in three weeks for a short stay, is a teacher, a primary teacher. Retired, but at her core being, a teacher through and through.

I could figure out how to put together my project, but when one has an expert next door, why not use her skills and knowledge.  Crin is also a lot of fun.

I’m not without artistic skills. When I was 8, 9 and 10, I used to make my own paper dolls and design their clothing.

No scrap of paper hit the burn bin without my scrutiny. I remember removing the turquoise and silver paper covering from the Ajax Cleanser. Do you realize the possibilities of beauty with a scrap of turquoise and silver?

Armed with nothing more than a ruler, scissors and crayons and white paste, from piles of these papers I created entire shoe box rooms with furnishings. Lamps from scraps and a sucker stick. Windows with a view from scraps of cardboard and my Dad’s match book covers of birds and flowers.

Kindergarten is important. I wish I could have gone. Instead, I had unstructured time and imagination. Also important.

Next month I’ll let you know the outcome of my kindergarten “art” project. I wonder if they still make pots of white paste?

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

July 31, 2025

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Positively Giddy

 

        Positively Giddy

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I wrote a short note to my friend Sandy in Washington to let her know I am still alive, busy unpacking, cleaning, placing, creating different livable spaces in my familiar old home, back in Etzatlan. (The first night I tucked in with only a bed and stove, my dog and myself.)

Then came the first load of boxes and furnishings. Followed by . . .

One of my favorite things is to create areas of functional beauty in my home. Perhaps I waxed a bit bombastically when talking with her about how much fun I am having.

Sandy wrote back, “You sound positively giddy.”

Perhaps I am just a bit giddy. I find pleasure in simple things, in accomplishments, and this work gives me great pleasure.

Just the same as I wrote to Sandy, this is a short note to you. I hope, and hope does seem to spring forth eternally, I hope to be more sane and able to write in a sensible manner by this time next week.

I will add one very short and scary story. With all the ins and outs and all around the house, full box in, empty box out, walk the dog, full box in, as though I’m on a merry-go-round, leaf and other tree debris walk in on my shoes and some bits decide to stay.

This morning I almost picked up a quite large centipede, in clever disguise, with my fingers, when I remembered to poke it with my cane first. It looked like a curly leaf, until it didn’t. In this subtropical country, it is amazing how many tiny critters mimic leaves and grasses, almost invisible, until they aren’t!

Oh, wait, one more little tidbit. In my bedroom I have a beautiful print of Our Lady of Guadalupe, a sandalwood statue of Quan Yin, a female Buddha from my trip to China, and a sandalwood carving of Ganesh from my India trip. It’s not really a shrine. Okay, it is a shine to remind me of my connection to Great Spirit, to God, however you understand God.

Alongside these, I hung a bedpan from my last surgery, which I had filled with an arrangement of silk flowers, a flower pot if you will, to remind me not to take myself so seriously.

Adios for now, from Giddy in Mexico.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

July 24, 2025

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