Like a Pebble in the Puddle

 

               Like a Pebble in the Puddle

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My daughter and I were talking about a favorite author, Louise Penny, and about the village life she created. Dee Dee said, “I want to live in Three Pines.”

“I do too,” I responded.

The phone was quiet for a minute. A minute can be a long time. “Mom, I think you already live there.”

Another quiet minute. “You are right. I do.”

Back in 2018 I wrote a blurb or a blathering, depending on you point of view. Yesterday I pulled it up because my stubborn printer needed a test page. I chose it because it is short. I called the small piece “A Pebble”. I’ll give you part of it.

“I can’t change you. I can’t change much in this big bad world. But, I can make choices. When I choose hate and spite, superiority and greed, ignorance and fear, I add to the mess of my life. I might hurt you, but, ultimately, I hurt myself.”

I know we can change ourselves, our thinking. I believe, and this is just my belief so don’t hang on it, that to make changes we need help, all kinds of help, some with skin on it and some without. If I want to change, the helper will pop up in front of me. Of course, sometimes, often, I misidentify the helper.  

I continue my piece from 2018, which had been triggered by an event I no longer recall, “As much as I am able, I choose to treat you, and me, with dignity, with respect, with compassion, with acceptance. Like a pebble dropped in a puddle, my choice reverberates, touches you. I cannot control your response, only my choices. It’s not much. I hope it matters.”

In 1978, ’79 and ’80 I lived in Chicago. Those years culminated the lowest point of my life. There, in my little upstairs writing room, I learned to find the mountains I sorely missed. I began to learn to change my mind, my choices, my life. I had good help.

Back to Louise Penny. It is a coincidence that yesterday I finished re-reading one of her books. From the afterward, I quote Louise, “Three Pines is a state of mind. When we choose tolerance over hate. Kindness over cruelty. Goodness over bullying. (Or over being bullied, my words.) When we choose to be hopeful, not cynical. Then we live in Three Pines.

“I don’t always make those choices, but I do know when I’m in the wilderness, and when I’m in the bistro. I know where I want to be, and I know how to get there.” End quote.

Me too, Louise, me too. I don’t always make those choices but I know how to get there. I know how to live at the ocean or in the mountains or on the plains and be at home each place. I’ve learned to love where I am. Home is not about geography.

Three Pines or Etzatlan or Havre, Montana, any home, is at the end of a two-way street. I give you what I can and I take in what you give me, all while making choices as thoughtfully as I am able. Like a pebble dropped in a puddle, my choice reverberates, touches you. Your choices touch me. We dance. We dance alone. We dance together. I hope it matters.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

September 25, 2025

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A Mistake Is Not Always . . .

 

A Mistake Is Not Always . . .

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A mistake is not always a mistake.

I have a bit different attitude toward making mistakes than some of my good friends. I’ve learned. I’ve learned that mistakes lead to more learning. Mistakes lead to understanding that which I might have missed if I thought I always had to be right.

Any gardener knows mistakes are made. Ha! Garden mistakes are often not under our control. Correction. Garden mistakes are never under our control. We put ourselves and our planting into the hands of Mother Nature and nobody controls that Big Mama.

My garden, which used to be extensive, I’ve now limited to my herbs and a few flowers and lots of lavender. One of my favorite herbs has always been sage. I love sage with anything chicken, most particularly stuffing, not limited to holidays.

Sage, in Spanish lingo, is salvia. Several months ago I began hounding David at Vivero Centro for a couple new sage plants. Like most living things, sage seems to have a life limit, or perhaps I’ve not learned how to keep it going. Operator error looms large in my life.

One day I went home with three beautiful salvia plants, plunked them into their container, watered and cared for them diligently, watched them grow into beauties, filling the pot. It wasn’t until I went to harvest some of the leaves that I realized that this was not the salvia sage that I needed for chicken. This was a different salvia altogether!

Back to the Vivero. David said, “Yes, that is a purple-flowered salvia. What you want is the white-flowered variety.” So I ordered the white-flowered salvia.

Meanwhile, a little research yielded a lot of information. There are some 90 (or was it 900?) varieties of salvia. I learned my purple-flowered variety might have medicinal properties.

Intrigued, I wondered, what about tea? I made a cup. I made many cups of tea. What I discovered is that this salvia tea has a calming, soothing effect, for me. Medicinal? I don’t know. It’s become one of my favorite teas and I drink it often.

Meanwhile, my white-flowered salvia is flourishing. The hardest thing with salvia is keeping it trimmed back. Both varieties love to bloom. Show-offs.

Mama Nature seems to be thumbing her nose at us. In this country of a short rainy season, with never enough rain, and a long, long dry, with too much dry, I never thought I’d look forward to the end of rain.

By September, first week, we usually are treasuring every drip and drop of rain. Here we are this year, past mid-month, still waking up to soppy squishy mornings. Every morning.

That’s a good thing, right? My basil and marjoram are in rainy heaven. They demand a generous drink of water every day. My mint and oregano are suffering. Drowning might be the more correct description. Thyme and rosemary look tolerant but seem to be losing patience.

My mint might recover but I will need to replace my oregano, after the rains retreat to wherever they go when the Big Dry takes over. If we get a Dry this year.

As I said earlier, I make mistakes. I would never dare accuse Madame Mother Nature of making a mistake. Perhaps she’s made some “trial runs” but never a mistake.

Good thing that I don’t mind making mistakes. Without ordering the wrong salvia, I would never have discovered my comfort tea. Mistakes are okay. It is not everyone who can grow grapefruit on a lavender tree.  

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

September 18, 2025

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My Great Big Beautiful Lavender Tree

 

My Great Big Beautiful Lavender Tree

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I fell off the wagon big time this morning, first thing too, with nary a thought for the consequences.

A year ago, when I moved to Oconahua, I sold or gifted about 100 of my pots, all because my new patio was too small to hold more than a few herbs and a half dozen geraniums. When I moved back, I took the Pledge that I would not buy any more new pots or plants, other than replacements, when necessary, for those which died of natural causes, but nothing new that required more care.

I want no more plants than I can care for myself with a minimum of help from my gardener, Leo, who mows the grass, prunes the trees and weeds the back yard area. I figure I can manage my patio, which is large, and which I had formerly crowded with all manner of growing lovelies, too many for me to care for alone.

I had to replace a lavender plant which succumbed to the dreaded white smut caused by too much moisture and high humidity, a seasonal malady. The dead lavender left a huge hole, so I decided to buy two lavender plants to replace it.

Right at the entrance to the Vivero, where we parked and when we parked, David had hauled out this lovely grapefruit tree, and I fell in love, or lust. Sometimes it is hard to tell the difference.

Like iron filings to the magnet, my eyes took in the beauty of the tree, and I was a goner. David, the owner of the Vivero, knows me well enough to have a gleam in his eye and smile on his face.

I ended up bringing home my two lavender replacement plants plus my lovely lavender tree.

Leo did try to stop me. He gave me the stink eye and asked, “Where do you think you are going to plant it?”

He had the question. I had the answer. “We will take out the dying lime tree and put it there.”

Leo had a rebuttal. “The ground is too low. That’s why the lime is dying.”

All this time David is standing over by the citrus trees, grinning big.

We settled on planting my great big beautiful lavender tree on the higher ground between the mango and the fig. That huge green globe of fruit hanging on the low branch may look like a grapefruit, but, I know this is a lavender tree.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

September 11, 2025

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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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