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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