February is
the Longest Month
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Winter, we are weary.
Whether she gambols like a bleating
lamb or roars like a lion, we welcome March after the grim days of
February. Skies may still be gray but a
fleeting scent in the air says winter is over and spring is here, or nearly
so. Snow may fall, temps hit the low
scale but spring will burst forth, even in Montana. The calendar tells us so.
I’ve no complaint, I admit, here in
my mountain valley in Jalisco. But friends and family live in frozen Montana
and even worse, in drizzly gray-to-the-utmost western Washington, so I keep a
weather eye on other places.
This
morning I found three more corn plantings, caches of the squirrel-who-hates-me.
I’ve yet to figure out what the rabbits eat. Perhaps their nibbles are small, a
pruning with little damage. I catch glimpses of them only before sunrise but my
yard is well-fertilized with leavings.
Iguanas lounge with impunity on the brick walls enclosing my
yard, awaiting their chance to savage favorite flowers. Lizards of several
varieties skitter across the patio as soon as the sun is out.
I don’t mind lizards because they eat bugs, unlike their
vegetarian cousins. Though I took exception to the wee lizard in my shower enclosure.
The thought of standing beneath water, eyes closed, head full of shampoo, and
stepping on his cold little body undid me. I asked Leo to please remove the
critter.
My favorite pair of partridge doves are sitting on eggs in
their nest in the air plant on the lower branch of the jacaranda tree. To me
the nest seems vulnerable to attack. But I have to imagine most threats to eggs
or babes come from above so I suppose the low hanging nest is well placed.
Perhaps I hang onto Montana weather because, even after three
years, I have little understanding of weather patterns here in this mountain
valley. Montana weather and seasons seem “normal” to me.
My Jacaranda, a huge canopy of green most of the year, sheds
its leaves in spring. Today it is nearly naked but not shivering because on the
top branches I see tiny buds which in a few days will burst into lavender
clusters and eventually clusters will merge into a purple umbrella. After five
or six weeks of color, new green leaves will push the flowers off, to float to
the ground.
This year I will get to eat mangoes from my own baby tree,
first time, hopefully in July. My mouth watereth.
Lest you think all I do is sit in my garden admiring fruits
and flowers and birds and growling at lizards, though I can think of few better
ways to live, I tell you, I do have a social life.
In the weary month of February I went with John and Carol and
Leo to the top of the caldera of Volcan Mt. Tequila, a trip I’d long
contemplated.
Several days later John, Carol, Jim and I explored the gold
and silver mining town of El Amparo and over the mountains on the trail to the
backside of Ahualulco.
The opal mine of San Martin outside of Magdalena, a short
drive from home, is nothing more exciting to see than a pile of red rocks in a
quarry. With picks in hand, Pat and my
cousin Steve and Jim and I hammered rocks into bits and pieces in search of
opals. I brought home several small opals. My best chunk of opal I picked off
the ground, walking from here to there with “eyes peeled”. I will go again.
Some of the best times are the simple times when we come
together for food. Just yesterday Pat and Nancie, Julie and Francisco and I
dined at the Casa de Romero. I had a chunk of pig leg baked to perfection,
tender and moist, full of flavor. I ate a small portion and brought home enough
to graze on for several days; the whole meal cost 110 pesos, less than five and
a half dollars.
No matter what I might have planned, each day dawns with its
own agenda, “weather” or not! Today I am back in the garden, watering, pruning,
admiring. That pair of doves I mentioned? I think they think I am their grandma
with a pocket full of crackers.
Sondra
Ashton
HDN: Looking
out my back door
February 28,
2019
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