I Love A Rainy Night

        I Love A Rainy Night

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            By the time I got from beneath my covered patio to my front door, a few steps, I was drenched and dripping rain. Already the floor filled with standing water, a shallow lake, half-way across the room. Not even a minute had passed.

            The sky opened. No warning. Oh, sure, I’d heard a few rumblings from the mountains on the other side of town. Nothing serious. No gentle drops to precede the deluge. Suddenly, the wind whipped in circles and buckets of water fell, whipped in all directions, finally settling into a horizontal push from the east.

            The storm raged only long enough for me to shed my wet clothing for dry, towel my hair, wipe down cabinets, sop up the wet floors with bath towels, maybe half an hour.

            Later in the night, I heard soft rainfall out my bedroom window, gentle, light.

            Rainy season announced itself a mere week ago, following a month of intense searing heat.  The middle-of-the-night storm woke me with a lightning strike that lifted me off my bed, heart pounding, adrenaline coursing through my body. The special effects were more than worthy of Hollywood’s best. 

            And we’ve had rain every night since. I love it.  Like in the song lyrics, it makes me feel good. And the average daily temperatures plunged from fry-eggs-on-concrete down to pleasurable.

            Our hot season is over and done. Back to perpetual spring until next May.

            There is no set schedule to the storms. This morning I have laundry on the line, wafting in the gentle breeze. I’m eyeing the lowering sky apprehensively, knowing if rain falls now, well, the clothing will be wet again, a rainwater rinse.

            Generally, the rains are an evening event. Clouds roll in from both east and west around 4:00. It might rain early. It might rain late.

            Last Saturday night, while apprehensively scanning the dark sky, Jim, Crinny and I went to the Plaza in the evening, after sunset. The Plaza is always crowded Saturday nights, more so this night. We had just missed a political rally, with party supporters attired in orange shirts.

We knew we might get wet. But we were on a mission. Jim had discovered that one of the food stands served crepes. He’d promised us a treat and he didn’t disappoint.

I had strawberries and kiwi in my crepe, topped with vanilla ice cream. We all chose different variations, fruits, toppings of caramel and chocolate. We argued, “My crepe is better than your crepe.” Practicing heroic restraint, we managed to resist licking our plates, just barely.

We made it home, dry and satisfied. I woke in the night to a steady hard rain pounding my roof. I woke in the morning to a sunny day with a song in my heart, with a smile on my face.

I do love a rainy night, and who cannot love the sunny days? The green is greener. All colors are more intense. If I’ve nothing else to do, I can watch grass grow. My elephant ear plants, normally huge, doubled in size this week. Weeds grow apace. The cicadas have stopped their noise-makers. 

What’s not to love?

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

June 14, 2018

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As the Worm Turns

               As the Worm Turns

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            Paradise. Yes, I live in a garden of Paradise. I suppose there is a snake in every garden. My snake is gray. Pure deep gray with diamond shaped markings like fish scales. I’m told he is harmless. Every woman since Eve has heard those words whispered in her ears.

            I can live with my gray snake. What can I do? He slithers whither he wills. My hope is that he eats rats.

Week before last, a rat infested my bodega. Until the evidence appears, One doesn’t know a rodent has set up housekeeping in one’s space. Rat is a sloppy housekeeper. He didn’t properly apply for housing, didn’t pay rent, and ignored my demands that he vacate the premises.

It took Leo and me four days of concerted effort to get him gone, put new screens on the windows, which had become the point of entry, thoroughly clean the bodega, all the storage shelves and everything in storage. Good riddance, Rat.

This morning while weeding, we discovered that one-third of my Amaryllis crop (I have at least 400 plants) have been invaded by a particular fly that chooses bulbs in which to lay her eggs. One does not discover the damage at the beginning point, however. Who pays attention to varieties of flies? What we found were hundreds of maggoty larvae in each sopping, mushy, rotten bulb.  Off with their heads, so to speak. An entire section of garden laid bare.

I love my Amaryllis. They bloom from the first of January through May. It doesn’t get much better than that, a constant color parade.

A quick trip to David’s Centro Vivero and $500.00 (pesos) of poison later, maybe we can save the rest of the bulbs.

My garden is full of metaphorical snakes, in addition to my all too real gray serpent.

The rabbits, they look like cottontails to me, which used to keep to the back yard, now venture onto my front patio. There is one particular cheeky, chippy squirrel which is the bane of my life. She ventures up to my screen door and thumbs her nose. She’s naught but a rat with long hair.

I call this the Year of the Lizard. Never have I seen so many and of such variety. Iguanas, too, a lot of them.

Ants of every variety. Some eat roots. Some eat leaves. Some bite humans with fire. Some, Leo tells me, are harmless. Their large black bodies form a parade across the patio from time to time. Leo says they are moving from place to place, bundles on their back. How does Leo know?

Except for my large and gray snake, none of these creatures eat one another. All are vegan.

Still, I live in my garden of Paradise. I share my bounty of beauty, flowers, leaves and roots, each according to his appetite, with the creatures around me. I have no choice.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

June 7, 2018

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A Pig In a Poke

                        A Pig In a Poke 

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            We didn’t exactly buy it sight unseen. Well, I suppose I did. My half. Unseen.

            Last winter Jim, a neighbor here on the rancho, and I began hankering (that word generally precedes a pig in a poke) after a hot tub for pain therapy. We agreed that if we found what we wanted, we’d share the cost, share the use.

We made two dread trips into Guadalajara only to find them outrageously expensive. Searches on such sites as craigslist: Mexico, for a second-hand tub yielded no results.

            Jim returned to Missouri in March. “I’ll look around here. If I find one and we agree, I’ll buy it and bring it down in my pickup.”

            He searched in his area. Checked out a couple. I nixed one. Another we agreed was too expensive. Our criteria; almost free.

            “There’s one in St. Louis. It’s old, like us. The owner wants $500.00. I’ll go check it out when I go up to see Mom.”

            Later, “He’s dismantled it. I won’t be able to see if it works or not. He’s firm on the price. Are you willing to risk your $250.00? It’s old . . . “

            “Like us. You said, already. I’ve spent $250.00 foolishly uncounted times, so I’m willing to risk.”

            A week later my therapy tub rolled in atop Jim’s pickup bed. It’s old. The tub, not the truck.

            A week after arrival, Jim had the electrical line routed from the box on opposite side of my house (of course) around to where the tub sits. Jim is meticulous. He spent hours staring at the innards. From my own experience, I know this to be one way to figure out how things go together.

            Meanwhile, I had my hands full rearranging and creating new garden areas for the flowers which the hot tub displaced.  

            The heating element isn’t working. A post is corroded, completely gone. But we can get a replacement.

An O-ring is broken. We can’t find one in town. I shudder to think of an hour and a half drive to the Big City for a thin circle of rubber that costs pennies. Not that we know where to find one. But, we’ll do what we must. We cannot fill the tub and check the pump, circulating lines and other mechanical parts without that particular O-ring.

            Me, I’m happily painting the skirt. I love Mexico for Mexico’s love of color. I’m transforming boring brown wood into a landscape of turquoise, ochre and aqua: water, earth and sky.

            Today I’m optimistic that we (Jim) will get our therapy tub running soon. We alternate feeling discouraged, grinding our teeth over money spent, another $300.00, shared cost. We are in a country where, instead of saying, ‘It’s broken, throw it away, buy a new one’, people say, ‘It can be fixed’. We like that philosophy.

            Friends like to chide us for wanting hot water soaks since May is the hottest month of our year with temperatures in the high 90’s every day.

But I know from experience, years of nightly soaks, that hot water eases muscle pains, whether the weather is stifling or freezing. 

Believe me, dripping sweat ain’t the same thing.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

May 31, 2018

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Looking for Wormy Apples

            Looking for Wormy Apples

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Have you ever woken up with a sense of impending doom—for no apparent reason? That’s my story today. Could be I’m asking for trouble. Could be the shadows I sense hovering around the edges of my life are tricks of light. Could be I’m just an old woman with old woman worries. 

I cannot put my finger on a thing that is wrong. So why this niggling anxiety?

My awareness seems heightened. I strongly sense the incredible beauty which surrounds me.  I am in awe of the idyllic life I live.

But, if you were raised like I was raised, when the apple is ripe, you begin to look for the worm. Old habits die hard. I thought I’d erased this one, but, apparently not.

My life is filled with amazement. The other day, driving back from lunch in San Marcos, we slowed down behind a walking haystack. We could see the outline of shoulders and a wide-brimmed straw hat hovering inside the stack. Beneath the load of loose grass hay, the sun glinted on the horseshoes as the mule lifted his hind feet. Amazing, yes?

Later in the evening, I heard cattle lowing and men shouting familiar words in a different language. Cowboys, the same in this culture as in ours, same western-style shirts and jeans, swinging lariats, sitting astride saddled horses, hustled the mixed breed herd, mostly Brahmas, down the highway. When I hear the familiar sounds, I go to the edge of my yard and watch this scene that I never tire of seeing.

Yesterday four of us went to lunch and spent several hours strolling the grounds at Hacienda El Carmen, a restored, centuries-old Spanish hacienda turned resort, not far from Etzatlan.

The grass-laden mule, the cattle drive, lunch at the Hacienda, all are gifts with a nostalgic flavor of the past. I’ve no desire to live in yesteryear. Change, whether I like it or don’t, is inevitable.  These experiences, these gifts, I see as my tree of beautiful ripe apples. And I pluck one or more daily.

I’m not looking for perfection. My back yard is a mess. Leo has just finished building another flower bed along my south wall. In the morning I’ll help him maneuver my displaced flower pots onto the new gravel deck out by the back-yard wrought-iron gate. My yard will be bordered with wrap-around flowers. No, this is not a worm. This is another tasty apple on my tree.

My patio is a mess of a different flavor. My new-to-me, but ancient in years, hot-tub is scattered in pieces, a puzzle to be put together. The aqua shell, the cover, the motor-heater-blower innards, the wooden base surround, will clutter my life for several more days before Jim magically (to my mind it is magic) assembles the parts into a workable, usable unit. Today Jim is running electric wiring to that side of my casita. I have confidence that this is not a gigantic worm littering my patio. Just an unripe apple.

I try to give my apprehensive feelings scant attention. I get this way from time to time. It’s just a feeling. It will pass. A bite to eat, a few chapters in my book, a good night’s sleep and I’ll feel differently in the morning.

To the best of my ability, I’ll not borrow trouble. Who cares if there is a worm in the occasional apple? Better a worm than half a worm.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

May 24, 2018

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I Love You—You’re Perfect—Now Change

            I Love You—You’re Perfect—Now Change 

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            The delightful musical comedy by the above name is about people in love. It’s not quite the same thing, but, my perfect love is my garden. Not a month ago, I said to Leo, my garden helper, “I’ve now done everything I want to do with my garden. It is perfect.”

            It is. Truly. Leo rolled his eyes and grinned.

            Last week I met a couple from Seattle at the nearby campground. They wanted to know which house is mine. When I described my location, she said, “Oh, you are the garden.”  That’s how I’m known. I am the garden.

            Then—Bingo! Two unrelated incidents have led me to look at my perfect garden with jaundiced eyes.

            Along my north wall, in a narrow garden area, among canna lilies, oleander and a crowd of bushes and flowers, I planted three flowering trees. In the summer they give me months of purple, pink and white pleasure. And no problems.

In the grass along my south wall, I planted five of the same variety trees. Leaf-cutter ants plague these trees. Overnight, an army of ants stripped an entire tree and proudly marched off holding aloft green canopies twenty times their size. I cannot even count the number of times last year we had to apply the stinky yellow poison. I run ant patrol every morning, as if it is war.

“The trees on the north wall flourish. The trees on the south wall are puny. It’s a constant battle with ants on the south wall. Why?” I asked Leo.

“Ants like the easy road,” Leo said. “It’s hard work to eat the trees crowded in the garden with other flowers. They like the grassy highway.”

“Ah, ha! The solution is simple,” I said, “Let’s dig out that strip of grass where the trees are planted, make a border with bricks and plant flowers and herbs. Plants that will fill the space, like mint. ” So that’s my first project in my perfect garden.

            At the same time the ants were munching every leaf from their first free tree-lunch of the season, Jim, a snowbird from Missouri, found a used hot-tub for me. Yesterday he sent me a picture of my tub, tied upside down over the bed of his pickup.

“It’s old like us,” he told me. It was cheap. Nearly a gift. The owner needed to get rid of it. We hope the electronics will work.

            The logical place to put my new-old tub when it arrives next week, is in a patio area to the south side of my house, where fourteen potted plants flourish. Hibiscus, climbing vines with trumpet flowers of yellow and violet. Large plants in large pots.

            I figure the climbing trumpet-flower vines will easily train on my wrought iron fence in the west corner of my yard. We seldom open that gate and all my large projects are finished. I admit to a twinge of apprehension at blocking my gate. But, everything is in pots. Pots are movable.

I’ll put the four hibiscus, natural showoffs, in front of the climbing vines. Smaller, lower pots I’ll arrange around the hibiscus. Beauty and a bonus: the plants will curtain that back entrance with privacy.

I lay out my tentative plan in front of he-who-does-the-work, Leo. I design. Leo muscles the heavy pots and bags of planting soil. Leo suggested we make a concrete slab instead of placing pots in the grass in front of the gate. It will make it easier to care for the plants and he would not have to move pots to mow.

“Oh.” I don’t mow so I didn’t think of that. See how a simple little project to make a perfect garden “more perfect” grew and grew. Oh, well. My projects for improvement might last the summer. I have Leo only a few hours each week.

In Mexican folklore, the cicadas sing down the rain. When they get wound up they sound like a roomful of table saws with crooked blades. They brought our rainy season early this year. I hear them morning and night. The “bedsheets butterflies” have arrived. Those huge white ethereal wings make me smile. The leaf-cutter ants have decimated their first victim-tree.

My love is perfect. And, I’ll always find reasons for changes.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

May 17, 2018

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My Romance with Trains

            My Romance with Trains

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            I’m angry. It’s selfish of me, but I worked myself up into a right little snit when I heard Amtrak is cutting service in Havre. Please, no, not an unmanned station.

            Selfish, I admit. In my personal phone and address book, yes, I have one of those old-fashioned black books, under “A” for Amtrak is the number for ticketing at the Havre station. I can phone that number from anywhere, talk to a real person, one with a welcoming voice, make my travel arrangements and know that I’ll get where I’m going with no glitches.

            About fifteen years ago, when calling the 800 number for ticketing, I was told that there is no Empire Builder running from Seattle to Havre. Another time, at the ticketing counter in the King Street Station in Seattle, the agent told me that the Empire Builder doesn’t stop in Havre. Given that kind of don’t-care misinformation, today, I might learn there is no Havre. Try to get around those derailments, if you will. 

            My very first train ride was on the Empire Builder in the summer of ’59. Grandma took me and my sister to visit family in Indiana. What an eye-opening experience. I loved the train. In Chicago we caught a cab, another “first” for me, from Union Station to Dearborn Station where we boarded the Monon to Louisville, Kentucky.

            The Empire Builder was a fine train, to my eyes, but the Monon was plush, with maroon velvet mohair-covered seats and lace antimacassars. I remember the Monon as being a little more old-fashioned, almost antique in comparison to the Empire Builder.

            So Havre will be an “unmanned” station. I’ve had grim experiences with those, too. One year I took the train from Havre to Sandpoint, Idaho, another unmanned station. The train arrives around Midnight.

            The Sandpoint Station, an architecturally lovely building, sits in the middle of nowhere. None of the town is within walking distance in the dark. No taxi sits, motor running, driver eager for a fare. It was nearly sunrise before I was able to find a way to my destination and I don’t care for a repeat trip.

            In China, a friend and I rode a train from Suzhou to Hangzhou to see the tea plantation museum and a silk farm. We were told that when the train stopped, for us to push and shove and get on quickly. The train waited for nobody. In reality, the passengers around us were friendly and helpful and assisted us to board.

            In the back of the car was a square cast-iron stove with a huge kettle, simmering water for tea. A woman passed among us with teapot in one hand, about ten teacups in the other. We bought tea for the equivalent of a couple pennies. The seats, however, were hard wooden benches, the floor un-carpeted metal, the open windows let ash from the engine enter the compartment.  Fortunately, it was a short trip.

            I don’t want to lose passenger rail travel. I’m not asking for the return of the cow catcher and the caboose (though that would be nice). I just want to be able to go from Seattle to Havre to Wolf Point and on to Chicago in comfort, with no fuss.

            Come September I’ll be riding the train from Seattle to Havre, that is, if the train still runs, if the ticket master can find the route, if the train still stops in Havre. 

I wrote this following tribute to our train about 20 years ago:

            The Empire Builder

I grew up with that train

rumbling across the Valley,

parallel to the Milk River.

While out in the fields, I’d hear

a whistle, the Eastbound or the Westbound,

would wonder why when the train ran late,

worry when I heard news that the Empire Builder

had derailed in heavy snows in Glacier

or that a freight had jumped tracks

near Shelby and crews worked ‘round the clock.

When Dad sold the farm and moved to town,

he built his house across the road from the tracks.

Freights roared through my bedroom

when I visited, though I slept, comforted.

Everything seemed good when the trains

ran on time (but I know an entire country

was hoodwinked by that sentiment). Now I ride

that train every year, through the mountains,

across the plains, to home. Pinching pennies

has always been my necessity but this year

I lived high on the hog. I rode the luxurious

sleeper in comfort, blanketed, fed and waited on,

my wishes granted before they’d formed.

I was Queen of the Road.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

May 10, 2018

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Out Behind the Barn

Out Behind the Barn

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            Broken bones. Missing parts. Titanium joints. Scraped eyeballs. A gimp, a limp and a cane. Moving more slowly every day.

            “Pain is a brute dictator,” said Dr. Backman, the quiropractico I saw this week in Mazatlan. “The more we hurt, the less we move.”

            He didn’t say—and—the less we move, the more we hurt. But I got it.

            And, yes, that is his real name. Dr. Backman, the man who works with backs.

            To my shame, I put myself in the shape I’m in today. After hip replacement, three years ago, my physical therapist, sweet, young, Arturo, told me I’d need to do exercises every day for the rest of my life.

            To my shame. He was young. I am an older woman. We older women here in Mexico are respected, almost venerated. I quickly learned I could bully Arturo with a look. A grimace of pain and Arturo backed off, let me slide. My physical therapist in Havre never would have let me get away with that. Quite the contrary.

            Yes, to my shame. After six months of gentle exercise with Arturo, I took a tip. Gone five weeks. Did I exercise during those weeks? Come on. What do you think? Did I resume workouts on my return? Shame on me.

            Desperation got me to finally seek help—not the direct pain but a side effect of the pain. I had begun moving more slowly, feeling weaker. Fueled by my fear and that same stubbornness with which I quit exercising, I will bully myself into following directions.

            Frankly, what I must do looks like a full-time job. But, Dr. B said for me to begin slowly, start with a couple. Walk every day, small walks. Climb stairs. Slowly. And I can alternate dreaded workouts with lovely moist heat treatments. I’ll use heat as my carrot.

            A couple things on the illustrated list terrify me. “Do you imagine I’ll ever be able to do that>” “You’ll be surprised how quickly,” he answered. Easy for him to say.

            What does surprise me is to learn just how lazy I have become. Sure, I am busy every day with my housework, with gardening, pruning and watering my extensive collection of flowers. Did you know that a person can train herself to do all those daily chores without using muscles of one specific leg?

            I see by my clock that it is time for another small walk. I’ll take the long way around to the only two-story house on the rancho. I have permission from the owners to the outside climb stairs. When I return to my casita, I have this stretchy thing I will do with an elastic band. Then the heavenly heat. However . . .

            Hip shot. Spavined hocks. Sway-backed. If I were a horse, I would have to take myself out behind the barn and shoot me.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

May 3, 2018

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