Philosophy or Compost? Food or Love?

 

Philosophy or Compost? Food or Love?

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Some days it is a great comfort to me. Other days, a rather delightful joke, makes me chuckle at myself. I can still hear the laughter in my friend’s voice as he said to me, all those hundred years ago, “Tomorrow things will be different. They may not be better. They may not be worse. But they will be different.”

I was a bit of a drama queen back then, a bit hooked on adrenaline. Even tragedy held excitement. I was prone to jump to conclusions, to make decisions and leap into action without assessing the height or depth of the cliff. This is my self-assessment based on memory and we all know how flawed that is! Yours may not be, but my memory is, well, creative.

My friend’s words stuck with me and taught me that no matter what is going on today: bliss, tragedy, illness, desperation, hilarity, love, boredom, grief, work without recompense, no matter what, tomorrow will be different. Circumstances shift. Feelings adjust. Clouds move in. The sun comes out. Stuff like that.

I’m not going anywhere with this. I simply like to share bits of my philosophy. I would share my personal favorite conspiracy theories but I forgot where I hid my tinfoil hat.

This morning on my way into the backyard for a sun-sit, I was waylaid by one amaryllis. When I moved here, there were perhaps 150 amaryllis bulbs that bloomed January through April. The following year, 200. I counted. I split them and moved them about. 300. 400. Then, NONE. Digging revealed an army of fat curly worms. Worms ate all the bulbs.

Being from Montana, I remembered hail storms, early freezes, drought years, grasshoppers. Happens, doesn’t it? A whole crop crippled, wiped out, in a blink. One lonely amaryllis buried in the dirt, waited out the storm, the worm, these four years. I like to think the flower is as happy to see me smile as I am to see its beautiful face.

Much of my current pleasure comes from my flowering yard, the fruit trees I’ve planted and my bucket garden. And my compost pit. Composting is new to me. It has been a learning experience for both me and my gardener, Leo. He does the hard work. I beam at him. I beam at my plants.

Making compost is easy with daily sunshine, plenty of fuel in grass and leaves and horse poop from across the way; how could it not succeed!

A mere four months after we began filling the pit with lawn and kitchen scraps, Leo was able to mulch all the trees and many of the plants with rich humus.

Immediately, my lime tree, which had been in hibernation and suffering from curly leaf, pruned and enriched, perked up. The papaya, which itself came close to being chopped into the pit, has a dozen baby fruits. The mango is leafing into spring. Seedlings stand strong, ready to pot into prepared buckets.

In February, I will be eating (and sharing) tomatoes and squash planted in November, both which managed a slow grow through winter.

Our tiny community thrives on food-share. I fill baskets with extras from my garden. Lani and Nancie, our resident bakers, frequently bring around cookies or invite us over for cake. Kathy bakes artisan bread, and she explains, “It is more than we can eat and doesn’t freeze well.”

To me, sharing food, whether a meal or cookies or garden tomatoes, is the same as partaking in Communion. Sharing food is a holy act. This is my belief and I don’t ask you to buy into it.

When I get hungry for pate de marlin, I share it with Ariel. He and I are the only ones who eat it. I don’t have a recipe. I put ingredients together until it tastes right. Pre-pandemic, I took a batch to a pot-luck dinner at Nancie’s. Ariel and I scooped large spoonsful onto our plates. Nobody else touched it. Pate de marlin is our special connection.

A couple days ago Leo plunked a bag onto my patio table. I peeked in. Smoked marlin, cream cheese, a handful of cilantro, a huge onion, a jar of nacho style jalapenos. And a packet of Crackets (like Ritz).

“Do you think this is a not-so-subtle hint?” 

Leo likes how we all share food. He says, “Sometimes food is love.”

Love—Communion. The same thing.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

Ending January, philosophically

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Dear Most Precious Son and Daughter

 

            Dear Most Precious Son and Daughter

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Dear Most Wonderful, Most Precious, Beautiful and Intelligent Beyond Compare, My Loving Son and Daughter,

I am writing to let you know that it is time for you to put your heads together and figure out a plan for elder care. With great sadness I report, it is the beginning of the end. I left a burner on beneath the egg pan this morning. Ate breakfast. Went outside and puttered in the garden. Came back inside to the odor of hot metal and burned butter.

Fortunately the pan did not melt onto the burner. The house is still intact. I did not go up in flames nor die of smoke inhalation.

However, that is small consolation. My fear is that my memory is losing.

Oh, if only it were one thing. Twice this week I found myself standing in front of my dishes cupboard wondering why I was there. Oh, well, as long as I’m here, I’ll make a cup of tea. In the three steps back to the kitchen counter, cup and tea in hand, I remembered, I wanted a clean dish cloth and dish towel. Back to the cupboard before I forgot again. Oh, poor mis-remembering brain.

Oh, the emails without the intended attachments. Oh, the misplaced words. Oh, the names dropped from the tip of my tongue.

Dearest Sweetest Son and Daughter, remember the times I joked that you could just set me on an ice floe in the Arctic and let me float out to sea? Please, may we make a new plan? While it is true that when the time comes, I possibly will not know where I am nor care, please don’t let me go frozen. I do dread the cold that makes my joints ache.

Today I sat on my concrete slab beneath the jacaranda tree in the back yard for an entire hour, in the full sun, basking like a lizard, figuring how to divide my time between Washington with you, Ben, and Montana, with you, Dee Dee.

You did say you would take me in, yes, you did. Don’t panic. I’m not ready for that yet. Just thinking ahead, envisioning carving out (or adding on) a private area in your respective homes, my most loving and wonderful children.  

I think a shower room set up like a carwash would be a treat. Just hook my wheelchair to a pulley and pull me through the hot-water wash cycle with colored bubbles, pink, blue and yellow. Lavender scented water would be nice. At the end of the wash, you could push a button on the handy-dandy swivel, turn me around and run me through a hot-water rinse cycle. Easy-peasy.

After my wash, a few minutes in the steamy sauna and I’ll be ready for bed, to sleep away the night beneath my cozy down comforter. What do you think? Brilliant idea, right? You got that, the sauna, right?

Let’s see. We’ve now handled shelter and hygiene. What’s next? Yes, thank you. Nutrition, sustenance. I figure the first liberty you will take away from me will be cooking, given my proclivity for using the kitchen like a science lab and leaving the Bunsen burner on beneath the empty beaker.

Fortunately, both of you are wonderful creative cooks so I know I will be well fed. It won’t matter what you feed me because I will not remember what it is anyway. Plus, I’ve never met a food I didn’t like.

From friends’ stories, I’ve heard that I might get clever and cantankerous and demand ice-cream and chocolate. The way I figure, what will that matter? Feed me. I won’t live forever.

Well, my Darlings, I think that about covers the basics. Please do remember, no ice floe. Please.

Your Mother who loves you beyond compare.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

Coldest week in January, ‘23

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The Mosquito Buzz of Epicaricacy

 

The Mosquito Buzz of Epicaricacy

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A friend introduced me to a new word: epicaricacy. An Olde English word. Means joy upon evil. Like schadenfreude. Like when someone else stubs his toe and stumbles, you gloat that it wasn’t you. Which has more than a sniff of self-righteousness.

I know the word intimately. I try to keep it swatted away and like a mosquito, it returns.

What strange creatures we are who live much inside our own heads. And what a strange head, speaking for myself. I cannot trust everything I think.

An example: There is a truly wretched person, disagreeable, passively aggressive, rude and dishonest and always right. I had dreaded an inevitable conversation. Held myself stiff and anxious in anticipation. We sat down to talk. Within minutes, I found myself filled with love and compassion.

I don’t understand myself. Why do I always have to be the person who changes? That critical part of me secretly enjoys feeling righteous, feeling better than. That is, that critical ugly part of me. That is all I am willing to say about that.

Sitting on my patio, much later, I feel overwhelmed with the riot of color surrounding me, every possible green. Red, blue, purple, white, yellow and orange flowers. Gold finches, like Christmas decorations, hang about in the artichokes. Hummingbirds stitch the whole glory together like a crazy quilt. Ever whirling butterflies add splotches of cinematic color.

Jasmine is pushing out first blooms. Tomatoes planted a month ago have first blossoms. Soon I’ll be eating squash flowers. I’m harvesting most of my limes to make room on the trees for babies, promises from white aromatic flowers. My yard fills with natural perfumes.

Often in the morning, diesel fumes, from the highway just over there, push away the scents of flowers. But flowers are strong. They come back.

I revel in those mornings when the air is not oppressive, but fresh, the diesel undetected. I can smell the corn growing in the neighboring fields, the cut cane in huge double trailers chugging past.

The bobcat is hanging about again. I could smell its rankness night before last. Last night Lola was restless, prowling and growling.

This morning on our sunrise walk, the horses on both sides of the arroyo took flight at strange noises. They ran as far as their enclosures allowed, stood stiff-legged, alert toward the north. The bobcat? I don’t know. I heard the strange sounds but I don’t know a bobcat’s sounds. Another mystery. I want the answer. I want it to be simple.

Rye bread is rising in the pans. Rye bread takes forever. So Lola and I head out for an extra neighborhood walk-about. Me to clear my head and Lola for whatever snoogies and/or treats she can glean. We did well. One neighbor keeps treats for Lola’s visits. Talked with six different neighbors. And the mule.

Ah, the mule. Here comes that pesky epicaricacy mosquito again. I realize that I hold a certain amount of animosity toward his owner, the skinny man at the vivero up the hill on the corner. I know how that mule got the huge scald marks on his back. Makes me angry at the abuse. I like the mule.

When Lola and I walk the lane, the two horses and the mule come to the wall and watch us, talk with us in their way. The horses’ ears swivel frontwards, alert. The mule’s ears, flatten out like wings sideways. We give each other attention.

I know my faults. Who is to say the owner abused the mule? Maybe the man rescued the mule. I don’t know. What I do know is that I hold that smudge of gloating righteousness without examination, as if I am somewhat better. You may vomit here.

I like myself better when I am living in my own little haven of La-La Land, among the birds and butterflies. It’s so easy.

I’ve begun asking myself, a sort of checking-inward, “So, have you had your epicaricacy today?”

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

January second week—Is it a new year?

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Calendar Girl

 

                        Calendar Girl

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“I love, I love, I love my Calendar Girl,

Yeah, sweet Calendar Girl,

I love, I love, I love my Calendar Girl,

Each and every day of the Year.”

Thank you, Neil Sedaka, wherever you are. I had to share this ancient song from the last century with you. Now these cheesy lyrics will possess your mind like they possess mine. Why? Well, that is the story.

It’s a new year upon us. Yep. 2023. Who’d a thought we’d make it!

I like old-fashioned paper calendars. I like to keep mine, a page for each month, on a small, weighted, slotted stand by my computer.

In the past years, unable to find a calendar for sale in my little town, I’ve laid out pen, paper, ruler and made my own, with room to write down the important things, such as, on the 12^th, give Lola her worm pill. Second week of January, pay the annual water bill. On the 22^nd, new book by favorite author. Important stuff.

This year Cousin Nancie gave me a delightful store-bought (as we used to say) calendar with grand pictures of exotic frogs. I like frogs. Just one little bitty problem. Actually, a big problem, not insurmountable, but a problem of size.

The frog calendar is too large to sit in my slotted desk stand. Shucks and dern. Oh, well. I’ll give the pictures to Leo’s nieces. Draw my usual homemade months.

I lay out the paper, pens, ruler to begin drawing lines and squares. I decide to label each page in Spanish. Enero, Febrero, Marzo and so on. Days of the week, Domingo, Lunes, Martes, etc.

I know, I can print calendars on the computer and it is quick, no fuss, no smears. I already tried. Wasted a lot of paper. They were pretty enough and neat enough but with not enough room to mark in the important things, such as, August 24, rabies shot (Lola, not me). Each month printed small on the page with large margins of empty surround. And the one I liked best began the week on Monday. I like to begin my week on Sunday. I’m picky, okay.

I’m at my table, using my frogs as a guide, have worked my way through Mayo, am drawing Junio, numbering the days, when it dawns on me that something seems off. Off had niggled at me through this whole process, which has now eaten some hours, because I’m multi-tasking.

I stop, look carefully at the frog calendar Nancie gave me. Looks good to me. I flip back to January. The frog of the month has the first day beginning mid-week. How can that be? I know that New Year’s Day was Domingo. It is a puzzle.

Finally, I see the calendar year. 2021. My dear cousin Nancie gave me a two-year-old calendar. What could I do but laugh. I tore up all my home-grown pages and threw the whole works in the garbage, saving the frog pictures for the girls. Done for the day. I’ll make a new calendar tomorrow.

A few years ago an acquaintance said to me, “I like your articles because you are always doing something wrong, flubbing up.”

So here is my New Year’s gift to you. I flubbed it up again. It is my role in life, to make you feel really good about yourself. I love, I love, I love my calendar, girl.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

January, first week

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Good-by, The Old Year—Hello, The New Year

 

Good-by, The Old Year—Hello, The New Year

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And so it goes. We folks with more miles on the chassis put away the old calendar and open the new calendar, twelve blank pages of promise, blank pages of mystery, of wonder whether we will make it through next December. That sounds grim but said above, we older folks.

I’m not sure how the younger people measure time. Maybe by that big thing similar to a watch on their wrist—that device that does everything for them. Someone told me it even tells them to “quit slouching”. Sounds like a stand-in for Mom.

Back to we older ones. In looking through 2022, not the easiest year in which to live, my friends and I pretty much agree that we’ve garnered some good from our experiences.

We’ve come to appreciate each day more, especially as we see friends, acquaintances, family succumb to various diseases. When I wake in the morning, I say, “Okay, alive another day. Come, Lola, let’s go for a walk. Holy Smokies, my girl, would you look at that sunrise.”

We’ve, this is me and my friends; we agreed that we are more aware of what we need. We’ve separated needs from wants and discovered the pile of needs keeps shrinking as we realize our values keep changing. Do I really need that? Or is it a want? We are not so much on-the-go. We are more content with the ‘here’ and ‘now’.

Solitude has given us an appreciation for small things we used to not notice or to take for granted. Quiet. Beauty of a blade of grass. Or the wonder of a rain drop. Solitude has given us more tolerance, more acceptance of each other. Of ourselves, with all our foibles.

We see that conversations are more intimate when we meet in twos or threes rather than in party convocations of friends in which most talk tended to be superficial. We make more eye contact. We smile more.

This is list making. I could continue making lists all day.

What I am really looking forward to and hoping I get to watch and experience, is to see our young people take over and put their skills to cleaning up the messes we’ve made and to making our world a better place for all peoples. I think they can. I think they will.

I’m rather ashamed to leave them our legacy—The Good Lord by whatever Title knows we’ve bungled nearly everything we’ve touched into a right tangle of knots.

I haven’t lost the plot yet. I remember when we were young and we were going to fix it, to make our world a better place. When we were young and knew so much.

Somewhere along the path we tripped and fell or got lost or quit or gave up or got quiet or, or, or . . . yeah, another list.

What I see in our youth today are people who are smarter, more aware, more astute, more able to cut through the mud than we were. They are; they are smarter. They have more tools. They see more clearly, maybe a bit more cynically, but who is to say that is not better.

Yes, I am talking about the same young people you are. They might have purple hair, multiple piercings, colorful body art, wear outlandish costumes. We did similarly.

We may think they aren’t paying attention, but they are. They don’t miss much.

They will make mistakes. We did. But I believe they will admit their mistakes and carry on. They know who they are. As I see it, they have more courage than we had. That’s a big advantage. That’s just how I see our youth. I think they have a chance to right some of our wrongs.

I hope we can graciously hand them the world, that we can say, “We were wrong. We didn’t know. We are sorry. We need your help.”

Let’s give them all the help and encouragement and splints and bandaids for healing that we can. It is a good time to make the transition. Happy New Year.

Sondra Ashton

Looking out my back door

Last of 2022

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