When the pot gets stirred

 

When the pot gets stirred

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I’m not going into a lot of detail. There was a death, not unexpected, in the family who own this rancho. It’s a big family, a lot of history here. For the past few days, it’s felt like, humor me here, spirits wandering, a lot of back and forth, disconnected and disconcerted. I’m talking about a lot of restless spirits.

I’m sensitive to these things, to an extent. Aware, that’s all.

This morning I woke up angry, for no discernable reason and with no object for my anger. This after a couple nights of really strange, even for me, strange dreams, in one of which I chased a charging bear, which, let me assure you, is not my nature.  

My daughter, who is quite sensitive to these things, cut to the chase with few words. “It’s the death. Smudge.”

If you are a strict traditionalist, an adherent to the way it’s been done for centuries, I respect your stance. I’m more of an evolutionist, move-with-time-and-inclination-and-situation kind of person.

I quickly got a good cloud of sage smoke going and swam around in it to the tune of “We will, we will, rock you!”

After smoking myself, oops, that doesn’t sound right. I don’t mean I smoked the sage, yuk. I mean I covered myself in smoke.  I drenched my casa, nooks, crannies and all, stepped outside and wafted smoke throughout my yard, around all the boundaries and betweenies. I finished to the tune of the old timey church song, “Love lifted me”.

I felt scrubbed, inside and outside. Lighter. Drifty. Good.

At the end of the day, despite every window wide open, my house still smiled of burnt sage. Me, too.

Good news.  No more bears to chase off in the night.

No bears, but I found two cicadas under the bed during my morning mopping. These critters are big. And crunchy. They could not have slid through the crack under the door. How did they get in the house?

Two of them.  Under the bed. You know what that means. Next spring an entire flock will come creeping out from the wooden slats. Always something.

Yes, something. There I sat in my puddle of sweat, minding my own business, when a lizard skittered across the floor in front of me, paused, looked at me, shrugged, I swear, shrugged, oh, just you, and continued to the wall and behind a bookcase.

What? Do I run an animal refuge house? I don’t mind lizards. I’ve said that before. Lizards eat mosquitoes and such. This one might have had a run-in with Lola. Part of its tail is missing. I really don’t mind lizards. But. But. What about at night? Would you want a lizard skittering across your face in the night?

A few days and the mostly invisible world around me should be calm again. In as much as it can be.

We are still under the heat dome. The news tells us it moved north. I think it just got larger, spread out. I like the heat, but in smaller batches. A few days at a time, hey, I’m okay. But not month (April) after month (May) after month (Deep into June) with no relief.

I’d move to Iceland, for its name if nothing else. I’ve been pricing walk-in coolers.

I know some things thrive in this heat. Iguanas. Mangos. I wish you could see my Plumbago bushes, explosions of periwinkle blue. As I said, some like it hot!

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my backdoor

Still sweltering in June

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Like Falling in First Love

 

Like Falling in First Love

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Out of nowhere, no foretaste, foretelling, forewarning, it dropped from the sky, swooning, gobsmacked us in the best way. Rain, glorious, wondrous, wet, rain. Before the sun settled, the rain swung low like a sweet chariot, and dropped love from the sky.

The trees, the grasses, the flowers, the chili peppers, the weeds, me; we all lifted our arms in glad welcome. Lola The Dog scurried into her wee casita and hovered against the back wall.

Lola is not a water dog. She cools herself by digging down into the dirt shaded by a lime tree or the giant philodendron leaves, with her feet makes the dirt fly up into her fur, much in the same manner as a chicken. Makes me wonder, who was this child’s mother?

The rest of us, all our little world, gloried in the welcome first rain. One hour, one solid hour of solid straight-down good hard rain. When the sun set, the huge fireball of scarlet-red sun, it seemed to sail beyond the horizon like a ship upon the sea.

All night the air smelled like wet dirt instead of our usual smoky dust alternating with dusty smoke. This morning the air is soft, gentle with flowery scents.

Now I ask you, doesn’t that just sound like somebody who has lost her mind in the infatuation of first love, first rain?

In the same way that the wild crocus popping through the melting snow doesn’t mean winter is over, this first rain doesn’t mean our hot season is done. One rain does not a drought transform. But it is a start, a welcome start. I’ll dub it our crocus rain.

The biggest difference to me is a shift in my attitude. Suddenly the world is fresher. I have regained lost energy. Before the rain, despair. After the rain, hope. That is big.

I left my casa with gusto this morning for Leo to take me shopping. I didn’t need much. I had made arrangements with Leo on Saturday to take me for a haircut. Like a weather change, I made a decision to buy bacon instead of get a haircut. Inflation hits us all. My stomach won this round over my head.

At the fruteria, I bought strawberries, among other things. I had three choices of how to buy my berries. I could get a hard-shelled pack of berries just like in US stores. K aching! I could pick handfuls from an open crate. Ching, ching. Or I could buy a large container of culls for a mere few pesos.

I bought the leavings. I end with the same amount of discards and the berries are sweeter, smell like strawberries. Last week, my container, a good mounded quart, cost 10 pesos. This week the same container was 30 pesos. The young man filling the container, which I have him pour into a bag, topped it high and threw in a half-dozen extra handfuls of berries. Inflation which came with kindness.

At the checkout, Pepe, the owner rattled on to Leo in rapid Spanish for five minutes. As we turned to go, Leo told me, “He said, the prices go higher each week.”

At the cremeria, where I bought a half kilo of bacon, my treat for not cutting my shaggy hair, the price of crema media had gone up 5 pesos. Crèma media is a heavy cream, a treat with strawberries, not a necessity.

On the way out of town to the rancho, I asked Leo to stop at the hat stand along the highway. I wanted a new straw hat. This man sets up daily with a wide array of hats, mostly hats for field workers. That’s what I wanted, a hat with a wide brim which hung downward to shield my eyes.

I have a small head so the man had to dig to find a hat that didn’t rock and roll around my head and slide down over my eyes. Finally, the perfect hat. Paid 270 pesos, for a hat to sit happy on my shaggy head.

As we left the hats, back onto the highway home, “Remember when this hat cost 25 pesos?” “Yep, seven, eight and nine years ago. Inflation!”

With the heat dome slightly tilted, not lifted, we are not yet into rainy days. The forecast ahead shows afternoons in the higher 90s, nothing triple digit; small relief and I’ll take it. The rains will come. My new hat will keep off rain as well as sun, the hat man assured me. Meanwhile, I have strawberries and cream. It’s a pretty fine world when one is in love.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

Sweltering in June

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I’ve nothing to say.

 

I’ve nothing to say.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Truly. I’ve nothing to say. My mind is fried, blackened to a carbon crisp beneath the unrelenting heat dome. The way it is today is the way it will be forever and ever, amen. I know that is a big, fat lie, but it is the way I feel. Discouraged.

Every morning I scurry to get basic cleaning done before 9:00 because three-digit heat comes with companionable dust. I knock back the most visible dirt and mop the floors because that layer of dust is slick and slick is dangerous to old feet. There is no sense doing a big clean because at the day’s end, dust is back thick and thicker, thanks to a huge construction project up wind.

I hope you never experience a heat dome, like being under a lid on a boiling pot, but even with a normal high summer, please be careful of yourself and with those around you, making sure your family, friends and neighbors stay hydrated, stay safe.

As careful as I am, I’ve had several bouts of sickness from the heat. I suspect that once you’ve been fried, you are more vulnerable. The worst part of it for me is feeling completely drained of energy, to a point my mind quits working, similar to a minor depression. I take another shower. I may be sweaty but I am clean sweaty. 

 In support of another hot topic, “Women of the world, unite!” We will have a new presidenta in Mexico. She gives us hope. When I first typed the word “unite”, I typed “untie”. Perhaps it was not a mistake, but a happy accident. We live in hope that women of the world get a chance to untie many of the knots of the past. That, my Dear, is as political as I am willing to get. In public.

I’m more than willing to be silly. Four of us women are visualizing lifting the heat dome. We are. Visualizing. Up, up and away.

My house has become a haven for lizards. Why? Lizards thrive in hot sun. Don’t they? It is only marginally cooler in my house than outside on the rocks. The creatures must crawl in beneath the gap at the bottom of the screen door. I did not invite them. I do not encourage them. I made attempts to catch and release. Don’t laugh. Lizards 3, me 0. I give up.

Why do lizards want to be inside? I can’t imagine. Maybe in search of water? Lizards eat bugs. Maybe if they stay, they will rid my house of spiders, ants, flies and mosquitoes, the occasional earwig or roly-poly bug. I hope I have enough house bugs to keep the lizards fed. Don’t ask me where that thought originated.

You may think my house a bug haven. It is not. Which is why I worry about the lizards. I hate to think of a lizard gasping its last in starvation agony behind my book case. On the other hand, they found a way in. There are an equal number of ways out.

Every day I check the long range weather forecast. Every day I see the same page. I suspect the weather people are on vacation in Antarctica and have set their computers to “rerun”.

I look for disturbances out in the oceans, anything which might mean change is coming our way, some day, soon. Nary a cloud in any sky. The NOAA people have put hurricanes on hold, not that I want a hurricane, but, guilty confession, hurricanes do bring cooling rains.

Trying anything to keep up my spirits, I focus on the birds. The Bird of the Day, my call, is the “Let-it-go” Bird. This is a year-round bird, here every day. Its song is just that, “Let-it-go, Let-it-go, Let-it-go”. Good advice any day.

“I’m trying to let it go, bird, I’m trying.”

There goes that pesky fly again. Where is my lizard when I need one?

I’m sorry. I really have nothing to say.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

June has arrived

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Full disclosure—Argentine ants, no flavor!

 

            Full disclosure—Argentine ants, no flavor!

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

We’ve most of us inadvertently swallowed a bug or two, usually a mosquito. Right?

Here the gustatory bugs are most likely Argentine ants. They are taking over the world, by the way. Saw that on a You Tube documentary. Moving north, house by house. It is so. You might not even notice them, they are so tiny, like a speck of dust on legs.

Anyway, what happened that busy morning when I was sewing a tunic top, is that I sat my glass of agua fresca, a fruity drink of papaya, pineapple and lime juice, on the counter while I was back and forth from sewing machine to ironing board. I pretty well forgot my drink until I got gasping thirsty. I saw that ants were crawling all over my countertop in the area where sat my glass.

These pesky little critters, a now-and-again occurrence, are usually in search of liquid. Okay. I keep them at bay with an ultra-clean counter and a spray bottle of pure vinegar, resident on the same counter. Days might pass with nary a bug. Then a couple days of frequent spritzing. It’s not a big deal. Works on all house ants, vinegar does.

I peered into my glass. I saw a dozen visible bodies. No movement, all dead. Like specks of dust, remember? I hate to throw away a good drink. I drank my agua fresca, down the hatch. No added flavor. No harm.

I don’t recommend drinking bugs as a regular treat. My advice is don’t look first, just down the hatch.

A few months ago I mentioned I am considering the advantages of renting versus owning. I’m still thinking. Gulp. Big decision. My casita is for sale, small price. In the interest of full disclosure, unlike realtors and politicians, I want to tell you some of my solutions for dealing with pests and problems.

Leaf-cutter ants? Go for the nasty poison yellow-dust. If you want to mess around with environmentally friendly solutions from your cupboard, go for it, my friend. They won’t work. Leaf-cutters will strip your favorite tree, bush, garden plot overnight, but go ahead, play with alternative solutions.

The fire ants, I guarantee, you will go straight for the kill. They don’t mess around and if you step onto a nest, neither will you.

Ignore all the other ants. Most of them are harmless. Those giant black ones are just passing through and you will only see them a couple days a year.

Bean bugs. I transfer all my kitchen products that come in box or bag into airtight glass or plastic containers. Separately. Immediately. If you should detect movement in one of the containers, take it immediately to the compost bin. Do not open the container in the house. I did once. Took me a year to rid my kitchen of the swarm of bean bugs. Vinegar worked.

Buy small. You will not be snowed in for a season and need fifty kilos of oatmeal, beans, flour and rice. Trust me.

Every time there is a break in a city water line, replace the water filters coming from the tinaco. Just do it.

Our water is full of minerals. Periodically you will replace the lines from the pipes to the faucets, the toilet tank innards, the shower heads. It’s not a big deal. Just don’t go acting surprised.

Scorpions and cock roaches, I spray monthly. You do whatever makes you feel good. Denial works for one of my acquaintances. He says he simply does not allow them into his consciousness. Well.

The only other helpful hint I can think of at this time is towels. I keep a set of towels just for the rains. I pack them onto the ledge of my east-facing windows during storms. I’ve even packed the windows with rubber insulation strips. Rain water still flowed in like a river. Okay, smallish stream. Towels sop up the water and dry in the sun. It works.

I’ll probably think of more helpful hints later. Meanwhile, if you’d like my grand tour, let me know. I’ll show you all I’ve done to make living easier.

Agua fresca today is papaya, yaka fruit and lemon juice. Ants, no extra charge.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

Ending Scorching May

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Water! We’ve got lots and lots of Water!

 

Water! We’ve got lots and lots of Water!

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

All things being relative, we have water. The drought is not over. I’ve forgotten what a cloud looks like. However, the valve directing water to the ranch property has been fixed, replaced, repaired, and, just like that, we have more than a daily dribble.

I still judiciously use water. Mop water, dish water, still get dumped on potted plants, whichever ones look most thirsty at the moment. I still have brown grass and dusty patches and will have until the rains come. If they come. The invitation to the Great Rain has been extended. ‘Come soon, please,” it reads.  Rain has not replied. See above regarding clouds.

As John said the other day, “Who in town has lush, green lawns? Nobody. Only in Gringolandia do we waste water on grass.”

I have not adequate words to describe how delighted I felt when I turned on the faucet to the hose to fill my trash can so I could haul water into the house for dishes, mopping, and flushing when the hose nearly jumped out of my hands, gushing water. I had become used to the bare trickle and glad enough to see that much most days.

Woo-hoody-doody! I could dispense with the extra buckets and pans. I could shower at night. I could shower morning, noon and night, should the urge seize me. Woo-hoody-doody!

I’m no stranger to running water. Running fresh water into the house in buckets. Running waste water out to the gully in buckets.  But that was 60 years ago when I lived in a shack with no facilities. My feelings were mightily damaged back then when a woman I had thought to be a close friend said to another friend, “How can she stand to live like that?”

Years later I was able to heal the scab from her comment when I realized her words said more about her than about me.

Let’s talk about the word “delight”. What it means to me, today, is turn-the-tap water.

I was prepared to haul water however many more days, weeks, months it might take. One adjusts to one’s circumstances.

I often thought back to those early days in Dodson, a five-gallon bucket of water in each hand, clomping through the snow drifts, the ice pack of winter. I was young and strong and full of delight with each day.

These days I hauled one three-gallon bucket, not full to the brim, filling containers each morning, enough to get me through the triple-digit heat of the afternoon, grateful for the little water I had. Most grateful, but . . . not filled with delight.

When I got cranky, I made myself stand again at the end of the long hallway at the hospital in India, up on the fourth floor, looking out over the empty lots across the way where workers were constructing a high-rise building, all with manual labor.

Many of the workers and their families lived in knocked together shelters of boards, rags and sheets of plastic on the empty section of the lot, among piles of sand and gravel.

One water pipe jutted out of the ground. Every morning the young women lined up at the water pipe, toddlers hanging onto the hems of the mothers’ saris, to fill their containers for cooking, washing, laundry. Every afternoon, it being monsoon season, the little families huddled in the shelters as best they could as the sky opened up and dumped the daily flood in sheets.

Puts things into perspective, doesn’t it? I didn’t have it so bad. I had water and I knew how to make the most with it.

So forgive me if I find sheer delight in my life of ease, water at the turn of the tap. This is today. Tomorrow is unknown. We still hit the triple digits on the thermometer every afternoon. The sky is smoky, tinged brown.

Today we have water. Maybe it doesn’t exactly gush from the faucet, but, all things being relative, it is adequate.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

Still sizzling May

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Burning, burning, burning, a ring of fire!

 

Burning, burning, burning, a ring of fire! 

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

My hen-and-chicks, a succulent in my rock garden, is burned to a crisp. The leaves look like ashes.

While April, May and June are our hottest months, here in Jalisco, relieved by a welcome cool-down when the rains begin late June, the old-timers tell me this we experience now is extreme, unusual. A day or two of ultra-high heat followed by a windy reprieve; that is the usual. The old, former usual.

We have experienced weeks, multiple weeks, where the daily temperature climbs into the triple digits. If it only hits 99, believe me, it feels no different from the high, thus far, of 104, 103 having become the norm. 

I’ve lost more than my favorite hen-and-chicks, both in garden pots and flowers. At this point I try to keep alive the herbs and the chili peppers.  Everything else is on its own.

We have very little water, some days none at all. The valve controlling water flow to the Rancho, to two campgrounds and two farms beyond our own casas was changed to the same size valve which controls my own house water.

This valve reduction is a political move or a retaliatory move by the out-going power-that-is. I’ve no idea the motivation. A delegation visited. He shrugged his shoulders and turned away.

Add to our severe water reduction, the States-wide power outages, which means the city water pumps are turned off in the evening to prevent burn out, and our tinacos cannot fill, even at night. Therefore, no water into the house.

Fortunately, the dribble from the garden hose is enough to fill a garbage can. I am patient. This garbage can has become my water source.

Also, by fortune or foresight, I have a collection of buckets and dish pans. So in the morning I haul in water to fill the dish pan in the kitchen sink. With care and forethought, I use this to wash my daily dishes in the evening. A bucket of water sits on the drain board for rinsing.

In the bathroom I have a bucket of water for flushing the toilet, used when necessary. In the evening I fill another dishpan by the bathroom sink with sun-heated water for my daily bath.

In the morning I use my previous bathwater to mop the dust off the floors. Then I lug both dishwater and bath/mop water outside to pour onto my herbs and the most desperate looking flowers, a few, one or two.

I hand wash what is most needed in yet another dish pan/bucket configuration at the outdoor sink. No plant has refused this refreshing drink, the elixir of life. What’s a little soap!

You can imagine, each daily task is given much consideration.

Some plants seem to be glorying in the heat. My mango tree is heaving with fruit, so heavy that we had to prop the branches with stilts to prevent breakage. The tree looks like a hedgehog on its back.

The papayas are growing visibly. My lime trees produce new babies on a daily basis. And I have two pineapples in pots which seem to think these conditions are the cat’s meow.

Yes, pineapples. Not my idea. I am not responsible for the whimsical acts of my compost bin. It greets me regularly with surprises. Who am I to say no?

Our water situation is in the hands of the great unknown. I hope it is temporary. I’m coping.

Meanwhile, I go to sleep each night listening to the cicadas sing. It’s no worse than some other ‘music’. Local lore says the cicadas sing down the rain. Oh, may they sing it down soon. This is only the middle of May. Early days. But who knows?

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

Burning May

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I Wanna Be a Tree

 

I Wanna Be a Tree

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

“In my next life, I want to be a tree.”

“A tree? Why, Mom, would you want to be a tree?”

“Because they are more intelligent and kinder than humans.”

“A Sycamore, Mom. Be a Sycamore. I don’t even know what one looks like but that tree popped into my mind.”

We each went to our computers and landed on the same site. Though we are 2500 miles separated geographically, we are otherwise quite close.  

“Holy Guacamole, these trees are beautiful.”

“Ooooh, I want to be a Sycamore.”  I said, with appreciative awe.

Dee Dee said, “The Sycamore symbolizes strength, protection, eternity and divinity.”

“Oh,” I said. “That’s too beautiful.” Pause for reflection.

“I’ll probably be a Jack Pine, clinging to the side of a ravine, down by the Missouri in that area we call Blue Heaven. I’ll be stunted, twisted and wind blasted, but I’ll cling between the rocks.”

“Don’t be silly, Mom. If you are going to put in your order, put it in big.”

We laughed.

“Where from come the glum?” she asked.

I didn’t have an answer. I’ve always thought myself positive, upbeat, a glass running over kind of person. Could be, I’m not who I think I am. Could be, that is the story I like to tell myself.

Take this morning, for instance. May is our hottest month and we are setting heat records in this part of the country known for being not too hot, not too cold, but, just right, Goldilocks.

As I said, it was morning. Never mind that the thermometer hit 103 by 4:00. Mornings are mild, pretty perfect up until noonish. Then the climb. By 6:00 the temp begins descending the scale. Nights are generally tolerable to pleasant to light blanket.

Me? At 10:00 in the morning, I was moaning about the heat. The heat would not be intolerable for hours, at least four hours. Was I enjoying how lovely, how pleasantly perfect the morning happened to be? No, I was moaning the yet-to-come.

Who is this person who took over my body? I want to know.

This thing I did know—I needed to enter my private sensory deprivation tank for a reset. This magical isolation chamber is whatever and wherever I want it to be.  

The next morning my world had transformed. Okay, my world was the exact same as the day before, so maybe the change was more personal, myself with freshly laundered eyeballs.

The same birds sang more gloriously. The same sun coated the morning in gold-dust. The same air refreshed my spirit. The same trees provided an encompassing umbrella. The same temperature/weather was pleasantly perfect, just as it always is this time of year, at least until noon. The same loving dog alongside, my wag-tailed companion.

Maybe, just maybe, I’d best keep my focus on being as kind as I am able to be in this human life I have today. I have to live this one to the finish before I need to be concerned about what’s next.

Still, I want to be a tree in my next life. I’d love to be a Sycamore, surrounded with the companionship of stately Elms and gorgeous Horse-chestnuts.

If I end up clinging to the side of a rocky ravine over-looking the Missouri, so be it.

Knowing myself, it won’t matter. Whether I’m in the east or in the west, I’ll still have days when I grumble that it is too hot, too cold, too wet, too dry, too crowded, too lonely. I will still be learning how to push my reset button.

Meanwhile the thermometer is climbing to 102 again. But I have a book, my feet propped on a stool, and a cold agua fressca at hand. Doesn’t get much better than that.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

Sizzling in May

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________