Tuesday, June 3, 2025

Gleeful in our wet dirt shirts!

 

               Gleeful in our wet dirt shirts!

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We did it! We single-mindedly pulled in our first rain yesterday (Friday) with a little help from Alvin the Chipmunk out in the Pacific swirling stormily.

Would you believe that the wet dirt here in Oconahua has a decidedly different odor than the wet dirt just up the road at the rancho in Etzatlan? As collector of wet-dirt smells, I am amazed. I love the scent of wet earth, especially after the first seasonal rain.

While talking about how the rain turned out to be a delightful mood changer for me, my friend reminded me that that rain train runs both ways on the tracks. Immediately I was back on the Kitsap Peninsula in Washington in February, after months of daily rain, wondering if the Arc would be ready to float in time.

Fickle I am and easily turned, I admit it.

I took a holiday from morning hose dragging chores for a couple days. I went out and stuck my fingers down into the dirt in a few of my neediest pots to find that the moisture held. More rain will come, maybe today.

Then our sadness. Paco died. Ana and Michelle have rescued several dogs over the years, and Paco, Monkey and Dude keep company with my Lola while she alternates between my area and the common area. (There are two more dog areas but my Lola and I don’t socialize there.)

If Paco stood upright, I’m sure he’d be as tall as me. Big and black with white markings, lolloping ears and tongue, a leaner. Paco was just big and dumb and loving and leaning into me was his way to show me love. Unless I sat down. Then he wanted to be my lap dog. Which I don’t allow!

Paco took ill suddenly, refused breakfast and went downhill throughout the day. The Girls took him to the vet in the late afternoon. While there, Paco’s big heart simply quit beating. His death came as a shock.

Paco was never sick. Dude, who had been ill for a long time, seems to have made a miraculous recovery. We just don’t know as much as we imagine we know, do we, especially about the Great Circle.

Sometimes feeling sad makes me want to get creative in the kitchen. Sometimes feeling happy makes me want to get creative in the kitchen. Sometimes other feelings, well, you get the gist.

I like muffins. I’ve not made muffins in years. Since paring down my kitchen tools to bare necessities when I moved to Mexico, I no longer have a muffin tin. You know how the best part of a muffin is the top? I took a basic muffin recipe, gussied and fussied it and made a tray of muffin tops.

Is that genius? I assembled the ingredients, gave wet and dry a quick swirl, added a small, very small, handful of flour since the batter was not going into tins to shape it, scooped spoonful by spoonful onto a baking sheet, cut down baking time from 25 to 15 minutes, and forgive my brag, muffin tops are the best!

I’d love to claim this idea as my own but that is not honest. There is a woman with a food truck in Glendive who whipped out a batch of these and my daughter told me about muffin tops and I thought it a great idea. So I whipped up a batch with great success and now pass the notion on to you.

Clouds are stacking up over the mountains. There is a good chance for rain this afternoon. I have only a couple empty garden pots to fill so I’ll crowd together a few seeds of lettuce, cilantro and spinach.

In the spirit of “Build it and they will come” and  “Rain follows the plow.” Oh, the folly.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

June 5, 2025

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Can’t beat the heat!

 

Can’t beat the heat! 

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The other day I got excited. Movement catches my eye. I was near the window, sensed happenings, looked out and saw that I had a new neighbor. Oh, my, he was so handsome, black, with stunning confirmation.

Here in our little town, populated by women much of the year, husbands, brothers, son and other family working up north, there is an unprecedented number of houses under construction. The land around, tall with unkempt wild grasses, makes the structures look abandoned. No. Houses are awaiting the return of the owners to begin the next phases of construction.

Across my street and down one is a house under construction where I spotted the movement and my beautiful new neighbor. In my mind I was already crossing the road the next morning to talk with my new friend.

A couple hours later, I looked out the window and saw a white pickup truck with stock rack hauling away my beauty. In the yard, almost hidden among the grasses, was a sweet little brown mare and a black burro. What!

“Oh,” I said aloud. “I know why Black Beauty came to visit.” Well, at least I have the mare, the burro and a baby to look forward to visiting.

In the nine plus change years I’ve lived here in Jalisco, I cannot get used to spring being the hot season, summer the cooler rainy season. It’s backwards.

And hot it is! I briefly flirted with buying a portable swamp cooler. What? To use for two months and store the remainder of the year. Store where? Every inch of my space is in use, functional and pleasing to the eye. I have that gift, to create order and beauty. Soon we will have rain, early this year. So say the old-timers, of which I am one.

The cicadas have been yammering on for an entire month, early this year, which is how we know the rain will follow their song, as always. Folk lore, yes, but lore which seems to be imbedded in reality. Funny, how we welcome cicada “song” with joy when first we hear it. Funny, how at the end of a few weeks, the screech seems to rip tears in my mind, it is so loud and so harsh.

Michelle and Ana, neighbors and landladies, have a lovely pool which I can use. Just about the time we could get in the pool comfortably, early spring, we all came down with Covid. Well, that set us back several weeks. I used the pool a few times. Hurt my hip pulling weeds. The bending over thing, you know. Then my back went on the yip. It’s been probably three weeks since I’ve dipped.

Every time I’m ready to go to the pool, and this is coincidence, my friends drive out the gate. Or the young  man who cleans the pool comes a day early. Or, what happened yesterday is that Ana and Michelle, on the spur of an inspired moment, decided to head out and spend a few days in and around Ajijic.  

So no pool for me until they return. After all, I am 80, count them, a lot of years, old. My heart is healthy but one never knows when the reaper comes. I’d hate for my friends to return and find my body floating in the water. As I told them, I won’t go in the pool unless they are home. I don’t need anybody else to be in the water. I just want them nearby.

So how do I beat the heat? At pool time, I turn my shower on cooler than I normally like, and bask under my rain shower. Can one bask in a shower? I do. What can I say? It costs nary a peso and it works, cools me in the heat of the day.

My rain-shower keeps me sane under the shower of cicada song. Think of an old-fashioned blackboard scratched by a hundred long fingernails, over and over and over. Cicada song.

Time to go pet the brown mare across the street before the sun swings around. She could use some consolation after being loved and left. I leave the burro alone. It has huge teeth.

Bring on the real rain. I’m ready.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

May 29, 2025

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Out of my mangled mind.

 

Out of my mangled mind. 

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I wrote my title and immediately saw two meanings of “out of my mind”. Let’s just let both apply and be happy.

My mind goes weird. Yesterday I woke up singing a mangle of Mighty Mouse:

“Here I come to seize the day!”

I sat down to write John and Carol, who have left or are leaving for Duluth, driving their vintage blue and white Vincent Van Go, any hour:

“Are you on your way,

Won’t be back

For many a day?”

Remember Calypso?

John’s reply:

Sad to say, we’re under weigh

Cruising along in our Vincent sleigh,

We’re in Jimenez, without Jose

And tomorrow we’ll be entering

The you ess ay.

At my home, halfway up the mountain on the west side of Oconahua, the skies have a different energy today; the air smells like rain, the rain that will be here soon.

Cicadas are out in full force, singing down the rain according to ancient folklore, singing welcome hope, singing until the sound becomes nearly unbearable, rains flow from the sky and the singing mutes, stops, until next year.

Rain birds have flown back and are inhabiting their nests, eggs tucked into the sack-like nursery purse.

“Just a singing

Down the rain.”

It will splish-splash early this year. It will. It will.

Speaking of mangle, Kathy sent this quote this morning, don’t know from whom she snitched it, which I scoochied around a bit:

“Give it twelve hours and the undo of the redo of the previous undo of the un-implementation of the delay of the redo will be undone.”

No explanation necessary.

Lee contacted me to be part of the memorial service for his father, one of my very best friends ever. Al, David and I built a 100 seat black-box theatre with no money, no grants, nothing but our wit and determination and a handful of volunteers. That experience built a depth of friendship which death cannot break.

Our theatre has grown, is strong and in better hands today. Forgive my pride.

I declined Lee’s invitation to join my friends. It might not be raining here just yet, but if I went to Al’s Celebration, my tears would cause a flood.

Like an unrepentant thief, I stole the next bit from long-time friend Sandy. In the seems-distant past, Sandy and I shared the good, the bad and the ugly. She always made me laugh. Life happened. We lost touch.

Recently, and gratefully, we reconnected. Again, we share the deeps of our all too-human stories. Age and physical miseries and our opening awareness of all manner of things dominate our talk.

As Sandy said, “We are on the last plane out of Saigon.” If you don’t “get it”, that’s okay. It’s unlikely that we will be around to clean up the mess.

Let me leave you with this thought:

If you are not part of the solution . . .

Then you must be part of the . . .

Sediment.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

May 22, 2025

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