A Dangerous Corner in the Road

 

A Dangerous Corner in the Road

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Yesterday I took a deep breath and offered my services for a job, for which not only am I ill-prepared, but in my deep heart-of-hearts, I know I cannot do.

This will seem like nothing to you but to me it is a BIG DEAL.

I offered to go to Glendive to fill in as secretary for my daughter until she could hire somebody adequate to her needs.

See? I knew you would say, “So what?”

Back when I was in high school (early 60’s) the career opportunities for women were sorely limited. On the cusp of opening, perhaps, but in northeastern Montana, the barriers were still firmly implanted. Five years later it was a whole different world for women.

What were our options? Nursing, secretarial work, store clerk, teaching and homemaking. None of those jobs appealed to me in the least, but two things I knew I was constitutionally incapable of being. A nurse? No way. A secretary? Not in a million years.

What I really wanted to do back then was to go to the University of Indiana, School of Journalism. I let fear shove me against the wall in a paralyzing headlock and took the easy way out. I got married.

Occupationally, I already had the necessary skills. Emotionally, not so much.

Sometimes what seems the easy road rounds a rocky corner and the resultant wreck tumbles one onto an entirely different pathway, down a steep cliff, and splat, so to speak.

I’m a most fortunate person. Life gave me many rough corner turns. And I grabbed the opportunity to learn many skills I could not have imagined back in those teen years.

However, fortunately, life protected many people along my pathways and neither nursing nor secretarial work popped up as options. Those people who work those heroic jobs have my undying admiration and gratitude.

I made my offer to Dee Dee in fear and trembling, but, not to blindside my daughter, whom I’ve not seen eyeball-to-eyeball in three years, I asked her if she thought I could be trained to fill in on an emergency, very, very, very temporary, basis while she assiduously searched for a real secretary.

She said, “Oh, Mom, it would be easy for you.”

I thought she knew me better than that.

But I love my daughter with all my heart so I was willing to feed myself to the lions for her. If it would help.

She turned down my offer.

Perhaps she does know me well.

Sondra Ashton

Looking out my back door

June 23, 2022

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No More Monkeys Jumping on the Bed

 

            No More Monkeys Jumping on the Bed

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 I suppose you’ve all heard about the latest horror disease, monkey pox? Evidently, this near cousin to small pox is transmitted by bodily contact. I want you to know I’ve sworn off sex with monkeys.

Not that monkeys are an issue in my life. Nor is the other.

I’d no more than digested that bit of breaking news when my friend, Kathy, informed me Canada is proposing to print a health warning on every individual cigarette. Yep, my reaction too. My mind boggles. Beyond a healthy giggle at the first reading of the first printed cigarette, do you really think anybody will even ‘see’ the warning again. We see what we want to see.

Not that cigarettes are an issue in my life.

Has anybody considered launching a search for intelligent life on earth? Just asking? NASA?

Not that intelligent life is an issue in my life.

What is an issue is Rain, Rain, Glorious Rain.

On the weekend I was praising the glories of our rainy season to my son, Ben, when he stopped me. “Mom. This is me, your son, you are talking with. I still live on the Peninsula in never-ending rainy Washington.”

“Oh, yeah,” I sheepishly said. “I do remember. Hang in there. Summer comes July 17. That day the sun will shine.”

But after nine dry, dusty months in Jalisco, I can’t help but immerse myself in the new beauty of sparkling droplets of water on every leaf. Every living thing perks up. The sky is a different blue. Green is greener. And one can watch grass grow but watching paint dry is more difficult.

Fortunately, most of the rain sneaks down in the night. Like last night, sneaky rain. Other nights, there is no sneaking, but thunderous crashes and flashes, then rain.

I’m reassessing my garden buckets, cleaning out what is finished and planting more rain-tolerant plants such as cucumbers and radishes. They seem to not mind the wet so much. Tomatillos and tomatoes look great. Rain or shine, they don’t care.

And, wowsers! I am eating the first couple of mangos from my own tree. Nothing tastes sweeter. These are smaller yellow mangos, sweet and juicy, not the ones you buy in the store. These have a tender skin and don’t like bouncing around in a container truck.  

I’ve made a new friend. He lives on the other side of the Rancho, by the arroyo. He is so beautiful, just looking at him nearly stops my heart. My guess is that he’s a two-year-old, a gaited bay gelding. At first we just looked at each other, shy like. Then I began going to the wall and waiting. Sure enough, curiosity won out. I began petting him. Then I noticed guamuchil fruit on the ground. Picked some up and offered him my hand. Oh, yes, a treat. Now I go to the wall and if he is not already there, neck stretched out, I call, “Pretty Boy,” and he comes running. Spoiled rotten, he is.

I want to ride so badly it makes my heart hurt. But those days are well gone, a closed chapter.

Me, I’m falling apart at the seams. The tremor in my hands has doubled. My skin, which has always been like rice paper, is now become crepe paper and, I swear, is separating from the flesh beneath. My knuckles are enlarging by the day.

Ears, nobody told us ears keep growing. If I live long enough I’ll be able to flap and fly.

I go slow. I go slow.

But life is good. If NASA finds signs of intelligent life, let me know. I want to see what it looks like.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

June 16, 2022

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Haircut Day at Mi Casa

 

                 Haircut Day at Mi Casa

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Rainy season has arrived early. Hooray! Hooray! Evening rains revive this parched mountain valley. Trees tilt their sombreros when I walk by.  

When one hasn’t seen rain in nine months, the typical gestation period one might think, each raindrop is a birthing. A renewal. New life. Figuratively and literally.

And I laid claim to my Baby Rain, took credit for bringing it about all by myself. I’m human, okay? It may sound silly but it is the way I felt, wet, standing out in the rain, drenched by my baby, laughing.

Gardening is different here in central Mexico. Pruning plants to keep them within bounds is a constant chore, just less frequently necessary in the dry season. But knowing the rains are here leads to thinking, “We need to hack this stuff off now, stuff like the Plumbago hedge and the ferns.”

We, my garden man Leo and I, had let the Plumbago hedge along the entrance wall go to flower. This shrub dresses itself with a profusion of blue flowers. When the branches get rain-soaked, they fall over, blocking the walkway. When trimmed regularly, and this shrub grows out of bounds quickly, the plant makes a lovely green hedge.

I am rich with a hedge for Plumbago flowers in back and a greenery hedge in front.

Trimming the Plumbago led to hacking the potted ferns down to a flattop hairdo, led to whacking back the vigorous Wandering Jew, all of which grow like weeds on steroids; once planted, watch out!

“Everything is getting a haircut, Leo,” I said, clippers in hand while trimming one of my favorites, something like a cousin to asparagus fern. “I should go to town to have Lorena cut my hair too.”

My hair, born with a mind of its own, responds best to short, wash and wear cuts. I’ve been whacking it myself during the entire pandemic. Poor hair. But as my Dad always said, “The difference between a bad haircut and a good haircut is two weeks.”  If only that were true. It worked for a couple years until my head got to the point I wanted to shave it and start fresh.

Leo said, “I drove my car today so I can take you to town if you want. Or I can ask Erika if she’ll cut your hair.”

Well, I didn’t know Erika cut hair. She’s a multi-talented woman. She’s got to do better than me. So I wrapped a towel around my neck and Erika pruned me in short order, pun intended, out in the courtyard between the Plumbago and the geraniums.

After Erika finished my hair, Leo and I continued pruning, whacking, weeding.

Sadly, we had a death in the family. There is a shrub with multi-colored leaves of such beauty to make you catch your breath. It grew here possibly twenty years or more. This winter, the poor thing struggled to keep any leaves, and, in naked humiliation, finally gave up. So Leo whacked, sawed and dug the skeleton out of the ground.

Pre-pandemia, I would have made a trip to Vivero Centro to buy a replacement plant. But for the past years, I’ve simply been splitting or moving around what I have on hand. I had been wondering where to put the hollyhocks I had planted in a bucket from seeds Michelle gave me. Well, here it is, a sunny spot, now vacant, perfect for hollyhocks. Thus proving (to me) my belief that to make room for the new, one has to clear out the old.

Gulp. That’s a grim thought. This “Old” got pruned today but when will she need to be dug out and replaced!

Whoa! That sounds severe. Hopefully I have a bunch more trimmings before The Master Gardener cuts me off at the roots! I’m having too much fun.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

June 9, 2022

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Martians, Killer Bees, Mutant Pigs and Hurricanes

 

Martians, Killer Bees, Mutant Pigs and Hurricanes

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Not many of us will remember, well, because not many of us were around, in 1938 in New Jersey when Orson Welles adapted the H. G. Wells classic, “The War of the Worlds” for a special Halloween radio broadcast over the “Mercury Theatre on the Air”.

Since the story of Martians invading earth seemed too silly and too improbable, more suitable for comic books, Welles asked his writers to gussy it up a bit, give it some bells and whistles. What they came up with was a minute-by-minute, recorded at the scene, rendition of a fake-news bulletin, the best part being the sound effects.

And panic ensued. The radio station, the police, hospitals, the mayor, the governor were deluged with phone calls. Otherwise sensible citizens armed themselves and set up bunkers, in fear of being zapped to dust.

I’m certain that we, being more knowledgeable and more sophisticated, would never be taken in by such hogwash today. Right?

Really? Martians armed with heat rays land on earth and conquer the whole planet. Well.

The only logical thing to come from this story, seems to me, is evidence that fear is a marvelous tool, easily manipulated.

Hot on my musings of this bit of history, an email from one of my Canadian friends hit my inbox.

He sent me an article stating “researchers” announce that mutant wild pigs are invading the cities of Alberta, (Just north of Montana, folks. Get prepared!) thus announcement motivating hordes of otherwise staunch and stolid Canadians to rush to the gun stores to arm themselves.

Two thoughts came to me in quick succession. First I couldn’t remember the name of Wells’ novel nor the year of the radio broadcast—was it in the 30s or the 40s? Secondly, I remembered a few years ago when researchers announced that “killer bees” were moving north wiping out everything in their path? Logically, I did some research.

Near as I can figure, after five minutes on each topic with Google, (See above; see below.) the Killer Bee craze started from a television show presented as a fake “eco-documentary” I kid you not. That generated a series of ultra-silly movies in the 70s and 80s, including a really dumb movie whereby the bees were sprayed with “eco-friendly poison” (I lifted those words from a quote.), proving that dumb has always been with us.

Then in the 90s, killer bee fear ramped up again, said bees still coming from South America by way of Africa—don’t ask me. So we rushed to empty the store shelves of Raid and other poisons. I don’t know why we didn’t think of scatter shot.

Gather around, my friends, I have a solution.

TURN OFF THE RADIO!

(“Radio” used here to cover multiple forms of media.)

That was my foray into “scientific research” and I promise to stay out of the research field forevermore.

Since I generally talk about things requiring no research, I’ll conclude with weather observations, being obsessed like any good Montana transplant, with weather.

Hurricane Agatha, our first of the season, kind of sneaked up on us. She grew up, matured, from vague clouds in the morning to tropical storm in the evening to earning her name overnight.

I confess to ugly and utter selfishness here. When I see a hurricane that close to the coast, I get excited. It means we will probably get peripheral rains in a few days. Not cyclone rains. Just rains. Which we need badly.

What I overlook (selfishly) is the devastation wrought upon the coastal towns, the people who live there battling high winds and floods, who lose houses, jobs, and often lives. None of those people in the path of Agatha are saying, “Oh, good, a hurricane.”

Other than a sincere Mea Culpa, that’s Latin for I’m really sorry, I don’t know how to change my brain. I could say, “Oh, look, horrors. A hurricane!” And with my grandiose superpowers, based on mutations of the Martians’ heat rays, try to zap the hurricane out of existence before it wreaked havoc.

But I’d be lying. I’d really be thinking, “Oh, look, a hurricane! Good, we’ll get rain.” I’m human. And human isn’t always pretty.

Agatha hit landfall early, saving me from an overload of guilt, may or may not bring us a smattering of moisture. Meanwhile, I check the NOAA hurricane site daily.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

June 2, 2022

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My ditzy-doodle retreat day

 

My ditzy-doodle retreat day

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I’ve been called ditzy more than once over the years. I’m going to share something I ordinarily would keep to myself because it rather proves the point. Maybe I really am ditzy. I don’t mind.

If a thought lazes through my mind several times over a few days, weaving its way into consciousness, I’ve finally learned to pay attention. I’ve been sensing that a retreat would be good. I’d been feeling a little out of balance, especially since my knee was body-slammed near a month ago now and is healing too slowly for my wants.

That imbalance is physical but I believe the physical affects the whole system, body, mind and spirit. So I set Sunday for my day of retreat.

I’ve not been on a retreat, solitary or in a group, in many years. But, for me, time set aside for prayer and contemplation has immense value.

In the olden days, whether a retreat was a day, a weekend or a week, I’d set restrictions on myself. Not quite hair-shirt restrictions, but if the guidelines suggested minimal food, for example, I’d go without food at all. Like I wanted to be a little better, do it a little better. I wanted to show how good I am. (Forgive me.) I’m embarrassed to admit this trait. Talk about false pride. Fortunately that trait no longer lingers. Or maybe I recognize it sooner and pounce on it.

Sunday I set aside the day for a kinder, gentler retreat. The only things I denied myself were telephone, computer, reading novels, and talking with people. I’ve not had television in decades or that would be top on the list. With that in mind, I let my neighbors know I was going to observe a day of silence.

I love going to sleep. I’m a dreamer. I know, more evidence of ditzy me. I dream vividly, intensely, wildly; dreams, I neither track nor analyze and seldom remember.

Sunday morning in my final dream of the night, two women, good friends, but as dreams go, nobody I know in waking life, joined me in an auditorium of some sort, somewhere. We sat on bleachers, talking about love.

We were not just making a list. We had a real dialogue with back-and forth comments, laughter, and easy input, free-flowing conversation about love in many of its manifestations.

We talked about affection and friendship, family love, especially mother-child love, romantic love and passion, respectful warmth, caretaking love, deep connections.  

Soon another woman joined us. She talked about those times it is difficult to love but we love anyway, because we choose to love. I awoke thinking, how strange, my dream about love.

Outside my window, in the pre-dawn light, a songbird began a solo. It sang long and beautifully, a love song for me. Okay, so I’m still self-centered. See, ditzy. I own it. After three or four minutes, this bird’s mate joined in the chorus, followed by a long moment of silence as the sun rose. Then the whole multi-bird-community sounded off and I got out of bed. 

That, my friends, set the tone for my whole day of retreat. I had a sweet, easy day, a time set aside for self-reflection. No visions. No voices from the clouds. No revelations.

Perhaps it was a day of self-love. I often found myself laughing at myself, especially before I got a chance to become too self-important. Or perhaps, just perhaps, it was a day of selfless love. Perhaps they are the same thing.

I don’t know and I don’t care. Who could not love to have an entire day full of ditzy-doodle love?

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

May 26, 2022

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My World and Welcome To It

 

My World and Welcome To It 

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My world is all I have to share. My world is ordinary. It is not much of a gift. Since it is all I have to give, I gladly welcome you through my doorway.

Take today. I got up on the “wrong side of bed” so to speak. Instead of getting up when I woke up, I let myself go back to sleep “for just a few minutes”. It’s not like I have a schedule. When I did get out of bed, much later, I felt like I was living in a vat of molasses in January, every movement forced through a fugue state.  You ever done that?

Walk dog. Make coffee. Slog through my morning reading, good stuff but with a presentation dry as dust. Seems to fit my day.

My daughter calls on her hands-free phone on her way to work; our chat part of our morning routine. Suddenly I interrupt her. I hear a whap of wings, and the black-bottomed whistling ducks fly over my wall into my neighbor’s tree, first the female, then the male.    

And just like that, my world of woe turns upside down. (Or is that right side up?) “The whistling ducks are back. The ducks are back!” I shouted and laughed. Inside me, I sang and danced.

These ducks delight me. These strange and beautiful ducks have a distinct whistle-call and nest in trees. I’ve watched them return to set up summer housekeeping every year.

I won’t say they are the most intelligent of ducks. They return to the same tree, to the same hollow where at one time years ago, a large branch was cut off. Every year I watch them nest and lay eggs in the hollow. Every year I watch the iguanas climb up the tree and eat the duck eggs.

One year this pair of black-bottomed whistling ducks laid two clutches of eggs before giving up, flying back over my wall the other direction into the huge tree in Lani’s yard, a tree whose branches spread to cover more area than the average city lot, a tree which houses numerous varieties of birds, seasonal tourists as well as residents.

It is spring here as well as there. My day fills and ends with birdsong and cicada shrill. Well, it is difficult for me to call cicada racket a song, but then the world is filled with all kinds of song so who am I to judge.

The cicadas are early, quite early, this year. Local lore has it that they sing down the rains. Oh, please, let the rains come early too.

Among the songs and sounds, the roosters’ crows punctuate the airwaves. It is a myth that roosters crow when the sun comes up. They sound off any and every hour of the day and night. It is by happenstance when their crow coincides with sunrise.

And the donkey. The neighboring donkey is further away from us than his piercing, intrusive bray sounds. That’s all I need say about the donkey. The two burros next door have gentle voices in comparison.

The whistling ducks are still atop the tree, preening and posturing. My daughter and I are still exchanging yesterday’s news. She pulls into her friend Vicki’s coffee stand for our morning treat. Dee Dee generally orders a honey bee latte, iced, and I mull over the special of the day for my virtual coffee. Today it is caramel macchiato. Perfect. A sweet drink for a sweet day.

I thank Vickie for the drink as my daughter prepares to drive to her office. I hear Vickie yell back, “Bye, Mom.” I love that. It’s a marvelous day in my world when the whistling ducks return.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

May 19, 2022

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Well, Change My Mind!

 

Well, Change My Mind!

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Two weeks ago a shepherd dog running full speed body slammed into my knee. Maiming me was not Chebella’s intent. She was fleeing from my Lolita, half her size, but in full protect-my-mistress mode. Size means nothing in dog world. Lola still quivers, after all these months, when Snowball, an ancient, tottering mini-poodle, growls when we walk past her people.

No bones were broken. The doc sent me home to bed and chair. The first week flowed rather smoothly. Leo showed up every morning to make me coffee and water my extensive garden. I don’t realize how extensive my garden has become until I can’t go out to check it.

Neighbors, Crin and Kathy, along with Leo, kept me fed with all my needs catered. I assiduously followed doctor’s orders, not because I wanted to but because pain forced me.

Day by day the pain is less except when I forget and try to take a step without support.

A week, to the day, everything changes, my comfy world implodes. Kathy, Richard and Crin leave for sandy beaches. Leo phones to say he has all the symptoms of the other Big C, Covid. “Stay away. Get tested,” I say. He does. Flu is flu is flu. He has the regular one.

Now I am back to full quarantine and on my own to feed and water myself. I would not want to pass any flu to any friend. I know I can do it. This is not my first solo bronc ride. Slowly. Carefully. Little by little.

I rub soothing gel into my leg. The bruise from knee to ankle looks like dark storm clouds in the west, carrying hail.

Oh, hail. That reminds me, my garden will die without water. I can feed me but I cannot water my plants. With temps in the upper 90s, all my buckets on concrete, my entire crop is doomed. I remember hailstones wiping swaths through acres of wheat. I know it is not the same thing, but this small disaster looms huge to me. Doomed. Flowers and vegetables. Doomed. My beautiful garden a barren wasteland.

Poor Lola. She sits by the door, whimpers. I talk to her. What does she understand? I fill her food and water dishes but no walks, no outside sits and no fun. In my absence she becomes super-watchdog, barking at friend and foe.

Oops. Lola was supposed to take her worm pill last week. I watch her scratch her belly. Oh, yeah. She hasn’t had her flea drops either. Poor Lola. Sitting, whimpering. I watch the flesh drop off her skeleton. Doomed.

My house. My poor house that I just deep-cleaned, overtaken with dust bunnies, the floor, the corners, every surface crying out for attention I cannot give. Pig sty. Bricks crumble to dust. Doomed.

I open my refrigerator. The shelves are almost bare. I’ve not been eating much, not been buying much. Now I’m doomed to beans and rice. The flesh falls from my own skeleton. I waste away in my chair, covered in cobwebs. Doomed.

Good thing I am in quarantine. I have only four more days of clean clothing. I will rummage in my laundry basket for my cleanest dirty shirt. Ewww. Nobody will want to get near me. Ewww. Stinky. Abandoned. Doomed.

My mind is wonderfully creative and inventive. Within hours after my friends drove off to the beach and Leo phoned with his bad news, I had doomed my garden, my dog, my house and my own self.

Fortunately I am aware of propensities to run-away imagination. So I did a simple thing. Not easy. Simple. I changed my mind. I let it go.

Somehow, life usually works out, often not the way I’d like, but life happens without my interference.

Ana and Michelle showed up outside my door. “We heard. We are shopping in town. What do you need? What can we bring you?”

My refrigerator hummed coolness around fresh fruits and veggies. Lola was wormed and flea-ed. A load of laundry hung on the clothesline. “We’ll be back. If you need us, call.”

Josue came to my door after he’d finished his workday. “What do you need?” He brought my sun-dried, fresh and clean, laundry off the clothesline for me. He changed my empty drinking water jug for fresh water.

In the mornings, Josue shows up early and waters everything, flowers, veggies and herbs in pots, trees in the yard.

My house? Don’t be silly. I just finished a deep clean. It’s not that bad. It will wait for me.

My own self? Day by day, I’m on the mend. I have friends galore. My only enemy is my own mind. 

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

May 12, 2022

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I Got Pruned

 

I Got Pruned

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Any person raised on the Montana Plains knows how precious is every sprout, blade or leaf of green. Precious. We baby each new evidence of life, coddle it, rejoice when it survives the season.

Living here in central Mexico with year-round green, flowers, fruits, one learns to do differently.

I had to discover how to prune all manner of precious greenery before they morphed into Audrey, the blood-sucking terror from “Little Shop of Horrors” and took over my whole garden world.

It ain’t easy, Babe. But I learned, slowly. In the beginning I cringed with each chop of the secateurs. I could be heard to mutter, “This hurts me more than it hurts you.” Or, “You will thank me for this someday.” Sound familiar, anyone?

Eventually pruning becomes second nature. The plumbago, beautiful in blue, was growing out of bounds. That is a big job, one for Leo, our gardener. Me, I grabbed my tool and snipped off great strips of basil, marjoram, and oregano from my bucket garden. Then I pruned seed heads from some flowers. Small jobs, easily done. Since I have fresh herbs year-round, the debris went into the garden trash.

That done, I walked over to Kathy’s to see her progress with making a mosaic of chips of broken traditional clay tiles around the base of her wood-fired pizza oven.

Now I’ll tell you the story of how I got pruned and my downfall.

After my visit, before I went home, I stood outside Kath’s brick wall with wrought iron topper, talking with Kathy and her sister across the way, framed in her kitchen window.

Chebella, Bonnie’s dog from the campground next door, came around the corner and trotted up toward the bend in the road, where my dog, Lola, was sniffing all the wondrous dog stories.

Oh, no, you don’t, this from Lola. You go back to your own territory. And Lola went on the chase, loudly. Chebella took one dog-instant to read the situation, turned tail and ran her forty-pound body full bore between the wall and me, slamming my knee “ooof” on from the side, pushing it a direction knees are not meant to bend.

I saw it coming and grabbed the iron above the wall, hung on, and body-slammed into the wall but stayed upright-ish. Kathy ran and grabbed an ice-pack and Crin hustled over with a chair. I sat. I iced. Meanwhile, Leo, hearing the commotion, came to investigate. He went off to scout out my old frame walker I’d put in storage for whomever needs it.

With the walker, I figured I’d get myself home to bed, continue with ice and in a few hours I’d be fine.

Ha. One step forward disabused me of that notion. “Chair.” I screamed. “Ice.” I sat, I iced. “Leo, please get me to the Hospital Paris for an X-Ray.” It warn’t easy, my friends.

But a couple hours later I returned having been doctored, rayed, shot with pain killer, given a splinted brace and anti-inflammatory medicine plus orders to do nothing for a couple weeks.

You know how we are. That first day I stayed gratefully in bed, thinking about my pruning activities of earlier. My plants down here often sigh with gratitude for not having to hold up the heavy load of leaf, flower, seed and fruit. It’s a relief to them to be pruned. They grow better.

The second day, like a plant, I could look forward to new growth, as I shuttled between bed and chair. Meanwhile friends and neighbors keep me fed and watered.

The third day I had figured I’d be well. You know. Up and at ‘em. Raring to go. Ja, ja, ja, ja. (That is laughter in Espanol; think disparaging laughter.)

Days later I’m wondering if it might take two weeks or more like the doc said. That’s me shown.

I feel discouraged. I feel grateful no bones were broken. I’m very thankful for my friends and neighbors.

I feel pruned. And I want to tell you, it hurt me more than it hurt you!

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

May 5, 2022

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