Unconnected Observations, No Commentary Included

 

Unconnected Observations, No Commentary Included

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I grew up, my early childhood, in southern Indiana, on a farm. I spent my free time outdoors, in the yard, the barnyard, the woods. I could name by sight or sound more birds than I can today. I had a cinematic butterfly collection in my mind. Summer nights my cousins and I caught fireflies. We called them lightning bugs, made a Mason jar lantern, made sparkly rings on our fingers with some of the fire, then let them go.

A lot of years passed. In the late 70s, I returned, back home in Indiana, for a visit with my huge family. I mark this visit as the first time I paid serious attention to my environment.

Sitting on the porch with Uncle George in the evening, I asked, “Where are the Cardinals? I’ve not seen one. I’ve not heard a Bob White call from the fields. There are no butterflies. What happened to the fireflies? The yard should be full of fireflies in the dark. There are none.”

“We-ee-ell,” Uncle George spoke with a country drawl that dragged that “well” into several syllables. Maybe he was thinking how to say what he said. “Well, this whole part of the country took up a new way of farming. They call it “no till” farming. Instead of plowing the fields, we spray liquid chemicals to kill the weeds and spray again to feed the crops.”

“Oh.” I couldn’t help but think of the “rain follows the plow” theory of farming that ultimately landed us in the “dirty thirties”.

I warned you in the header. Don’t expect one observation to be connected to another.

Leo helps with yard care for most of us in here in our tiny Gringolandia. For me, he also is my main source of transportation, translation, shopping. He mothers me. This morning Leo said, “Come with me. I need to show a builder a piece of land for my cousin. Get you out of the house.”

We drove out to the edge of town, turned right at the sewage treatment plant and dog rescue huts, then left onto a pitted, rutted gravel lane, up, up, up a slanted hillside and parked in the weeds. There we met Antonio, the builder.  

Leo’s cousin bought this postage-stamp lot, about 15 by 25 meters, situated on a steep slope, for $260,000 pesos. Cousin wants to build a two bedroom house. The view is spectacular, overlooking a vast laguna, filled with water-life, alive with herons, bitterns, ibis, and ducks.

I did what I do best. I began to envision a terraced lawn, stepped toward a tidy casita at the back of the lot, mind-pictured mornings and evenings and in-betweenings, watching the passage of the sun, the flights of the water birds, shadows on the mountains opposite.

Antonio estimated the house will cost around $250,000,000 pesos. At today’s exchange rate, that ain’t USD chickenfeed. Dreams come, dreams go.

One of my classmates sends me money every year to buy foods and supplies for the old people’s home in town. Saying ‘old people’ might be frowned upon but I don’t know how else to say it. These residents are the few in town with no family who are able to care for them.

Leo went shopping in our small tiendas and filled his pickup and his jeep with cleaning and personal supplies, all kinds of foodstuffs. When the vendors heard where the purchases were going, they sold them at wholesale, more expensive items like adult diapers, plus ½-1 peso.

The residents and caretakers formed a ‘pass it on’ line to move the bounty through the gates. Everyone laughed or cried, tears and smiles of heartfelt appreciation. Everybody involved, me included, felt like Christmas came early.

My yard flutters and hums with birds, butterflies, and bees. No cardinals. No fireflies, sorry.

Birds are in layers: those low, in the grass and bushes, those in the tree branches, those above, then higher above in the blue, blue sky.

“We need more rain,” Leo said, “I’m scared.” “Me too, Leo, me too.”

My daughter, Dee Dee, has surgery scheduled the 28^th. Prayers and warm wishes all welcome. She is facing this with confidence. Me, I’m a basket case.

If this were a novel, I’d wrap everything together and tie it with a bow. But this is life.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

Into second half August

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Hot Dog

 

Hot Dog

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I’ve had several dogs along these many years but never had one get a hot spot. In July, about the time the storms, pitiful as they have been, began blowing and blustering, Lola started chewing at the base of her backbone, right above where her tail attaches.

It worried me. Leo helped me corral her between my knees and we sprayed her with the purple stuff, you know, the stuff you use on cows and horses when they get a barbed wire cut or some such. I was wearing white pants that first day. Turned my pants polka dotted. Lola got some relief. So, the next two mornings we sprayed her again, along with two more pairs of pants. Could start a trend.

My neighbor Janet saw Lola’s predicament and gave me lavender oil to sooth her. Lola liked that and actually stood still for me to rub it onto her.

 I also had a confab with my daughter. She consulted the Google Oracle which told her that hot spots are a sign of boredom or stress or an infection.

We know Lola is not bored. I honed in on stress. After all, storms stress me. Lack of storms stress me.

Stress does not rule my life. However, stress does rent a small cupboard in my head.

I began supplementing Lola’s diet with a large spoonful of coconut oil and an egg, beaten together, every morning. Dogs do grin. Her coat is beautiful. If I thought I could swallow a raw egg with oil, I’d feed me too. I have serious hair envy.

Lola’s back healed, covered over with thick hair, looks great.

Then a couple days ago, Lola didn’t want to go for her morning walk. This was not my dog. Aliens came and stole her soul. I just knew it. While brushing her long lush hair, my hand hovered over her tail bone and I could feel the heat.

No! No! Not again! This time I checked with a vet in town. He said, yes, could be boredom or stress but most likely is an infection, especially since it returned so quickly. He gave me a big pill, an expensive big pill. He said she likely got the infection from mice, birds, squirrels, from some animal.

Lola is a hunter. In the last month, I know she has downed several mice and three birds. That does not take into account the disgusting stuff she rolls in with evident delight.

Giving my dog any kind of medicine generally requires strength, cunning and help. I fed Lola the pill along with a couple doggie cookies and she never even noticed it was medicine.

Two days later, Lola is back to her usual morning excitement. She met me at the door with her morning dance, mooched into my hands for a full body massage, ready for our walk. Her back end feels like a cool dog.

Her owner is much less stressed.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

Not enough rain in August

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It’s Not All Peaches and Cream

 

            It’s Not All Peaches and Cream

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Life. Huh.        

It is hard not to label things, situations. Oh, that is bad. Oh, that is good. We don’t really know if what we call bad might not be really good. Hey, voice of experience here. Often, what I thought was the worst decision, the worst situation, in my life, turned out to be my greatest gift. Likewise, the opposite. Uh huh, both ways.

Wait and see.

Arrgh. Easy for you to say.

I can tell you what I think, hope, fear, all conjecture.

I think my son has lost his last wingnut. I think he is soaring along with a mid-life crisis. I think he just shot himself in the foot. He knows what I think. I told him. Hence, radio silence. I think he will land on his feet. In sane times, he is the most level, thoughtful, sensible guy I know. That is, when he is thinking with his best brain.

My daughter just got a short, curly haircut. She is facing a Big Surgery. I’m getting a haircut tomorrow. Do I get a trim for my already short hair, or do I have Lorena put the #1 guard on the man clippers and whiz through the whole thing? Meanwhile, the surgeon her doctor recommends is on holiday. How can surgeons be allowed holidays? Don’t they know that when we need them, we need them now?

I remind myself to erase the labels. I know that I don’t know.

Meanwhile, back on the Rancho[Ma1] .

The Pacific is being pacific. Not that ocean waves lap at our feet, up here in the mountains, but we get our weather from the Pacific. Our next-door neighbors In Oconahua, a mere ten kilometers distance, are pounded with stormy rains nightly. Guadalajara, an hour away when traffic is light, is experiencing frequent flooding. We have light showers, some nights. Most nights are so quiet I can hear the trees breathe.

We have enough rain that my plants are happy, those that lived through the heat dome. We are not getting enough rain to replenish the aquafers.

My Magnolia lived. I didn’t think it would.

A funny sort of skinny-limbed, short-branched palm died. I replaced it with an elephant foot which had grown so big it split through its clay pot shoe, size extra-large. The elephant foot looks happy. That palm never did like standing in that spot where I’d planted him.

I keep busy. Work is my drug of choice. After work, such work being whatever task I assign myself, is done, I read. Reading is my other drug of choice. Both are highly addictive. Family traits. Don’t blame me.

Then, occasional moments of magic. I sat under the jacaranda tree, late afternoon, book in my lap, not reading yet. I have a really strange orange-flowering plant, gets about a yard tall, self-seeds so I have a garden full of the dears.

Tucked into the leaves of this rather ugly plant I’ve come to love, sat a female rain bird, a beautiful yellow rain bird. I don’t know what she’s officially called. She’s the one who makes the decorated conical nest that somehow defies laws of physics and hangs on a fragile twig. I sat a full half-hour, watching her watch me. Then Lola joined me. Whoosh, off she flew.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

Humid in August

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The World We Thought We Knew

 

The World We Thought We Knew

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Yesterday an email from Jerry pinged into my inbox. (See, I can talk modern too.)

Jerry is a high school classmate, Harlem, Class of ’63. Back in ’05 I attended my first class reunion, or was it ’06. No matter. Surprisingly, several classmates showed up, we met in clusters, here and there, discovered we wanted more time together. Back in that other world, we had been a tight class, maybe because there were so few of us.

At any rate, we determined to meet annually. And we did. Meet. This is the time of year that we would have already bought tickets, booked rooms, had plans in place for activities and for down time, eating, playing pinochle, talking, laughing together.

Then our world as we thought we knew it turned upside down. The plague came. We got older. Slower. Health problems. Travel became more difficult. The dollar shrunk. Many reasons, many factors have kept us from our annual reunion.

Writing to Jerry reminded me that I do not want to lose all the other classmates I’ve not seen in four or five years. Several of us write regularly. I want to send a letter to all, give them a recap of my year.  Call it a reunion-lite.  

That same evening, out by my gate, Josue and Leo ganged up on me. Josue told me that I need to get out, see more of the world. Leo jumped into the conversation and said that I need to find me a good man.

I gave them both the evil eye.

They ae funny. I told them that I’m just fine the way life is with me today. Simple. Solo. Good.

I’ve not been sick. I keep myself to myself much of the time. I keep busy with things that satisfy and interest me. Garden, sewing, cooking, reading, writing. Life is good. Why would I want to throw a wrench into the works when the works run smoothly.

I live surrounded with beauty. I have lots of opportunities to be creative each day. These things are important to me. I’m not a complete hermit. See below.

Last week I had a yen for doughnuts. But I don’t have a doughnut cutter, do I? Beignets are even better, richer, though they are basically the same thing. These puffy pillows of square dough, just like their round doughnut cousins, need to be eaten same day as fried, right?

I contacted Kathy, Lani, Janet and Nancie, those of us who are here now. Nancie and Kathy will soon be back north. What do you think, group effort and share around? Woo hoo! Everybody jumped on board. I’d make the dough. Nancie would bring her deep fryer. Kathy figured to bring oil and cookie sheets. Janet and Lani both chipped in with powdered sugar and cinnamon sugar. We’d all take a hand in the work, using my outdoor kitchen. The upsurge in energy had us all tingling.

Early morning, while I was setting up the patio to make doughnuts and coffee, Michelle contacted me. She and Ana were both sick with a flu. They had visited both Janet and I a couple days previously.

What to do? I set out extra hand sanitizer and masks. Leo came by. “Cancel it,” said Mother Leo, who mothers all of us more than we mother him. “Divide the dough and let everybody make their own.”

Nancie came by and agreed. Her daughter and grandson were here with her. They had a flight to catch and she was leaving shortly afterward. Decision made and seconded.

As often happens, lines of communication faltered. The other women sent their dough to Nancie, the person with the fryer, without voicing their expectations. Nancie thought they simply didn’t want the dough. She wasn’t about to fry a thousand puffs of dough of any shape on her own, smart woman.

Nancie made monkey bread, or pull-apart bread, with part of the dough and shared it with everyone. Janet retrieved her dough and made cinnamon bread. Everybody raved about the dough. I fried 4 puffs and pigged out, put the rest of my dough ball in the freezer for another day.

We creatively redeemed the day, though with disappointment at losing the party, the togetherness.

Togetherness. There is more than one way to be together.

Which brings me back around to my reunion. I’ve a lot to share with Tony and Jim and Donna and Sarah and Bob and Linda and Jesse. Where did I put my list? As I told Jerry, I’m still alive; you’re still alive. I love you with a grateful heart.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

August just beginning

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Living and Loving the Night Life

 

Living and Loving the Night Life

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Ah, yes, night life. Just those two words are evocative of many experiences.

The Prom. Many people have been traumatized for life by simple high school dances. The intention, learning socialization skills, is honorable. The actuality can be, uh, nightmare material for a lifetime.

Dining and dancing in later life. Probably a mixed bag for most of us. Some nights quite pleasurable and others cringe-causing. Normal.

Walking the floor over you. Babies are born. Night life takes on a whole new seriousness. Feeding, diapering, rocking, shushing, singing, hours on end. Months on end if baby has colic. Takes a toll. Many of us learn new words and phrases during these nights. But we say them with soothing voices.

The Little Darlings grow up. A different kind of night life. Is it not wonderful how life gives us so many and such a variety of chances for personal growth!

It is one o’clock in the morning. You gave Bubba, or is it Sis, an eleven o’clock curfew. This is a school night and you felt that you were quite liberal with “Be home by eleven.” With each tap of your foot you conjure up a whole different scenario.

You phone your child’s friend’s parents. Maybe call the hospital. You picture the car upside down in the ditch. (What were you doing out on the country road, young lady?) You picture a similar scene with the train crossing. We remember all too well when we were those ages and what tricks we managed. Worry plus fear generates anger. See above for phrases, but without soothing voices. “Grounded until you are twenty-nine.”

It is a different these days when every young person has a communication device implanted in their palm. Hey, you are still tapping your foot, arms crossed, waiting. Why don’t they call?

Fast forward to old age. “It’s four in the morning and once more the dawning” woke me with a panoramic viewing of too many of my own less salubrious life choices, the kind that make me cringe, like a slide show, one squench of memory following another.

“Did I really do that?”  “I thought that one was deeply buried.” “Ouch.” “Not again.” “That’s not how I meant it to go.” “Let me explain.” “There were mitigating factors.”

Sure there were. What brought this on anyway? I know the answer. My friend Kathy and I have had several conversations about how so many people we know seem to be acting out of hate, anger, fear, jealousy, distrust and intolerance, acting and/or reacting out of proportion to their situation. What we see, and we are only in our own skin here so no doubt mis-perceive a lot, makes us feel sad, helpless to help.

The Grand Poobah of the Universe set up my slide show for a purpose. I think the Grand Poobah loves me. Each scene presented to me contained elements of fear, jealousy, distrust, shame and such like.

I have led a varied and interesting life. More than most people, I have had multiple opportunities to have turned into a bitter, cold, resentful, snarling old woman.

I could have held onto each element, fed and nurtured them, grew them into an entire garden and let them rule my life. It is the easier way. It is.

I am no saint. Ask all my friends. Ask my kids. They will tell you. In detail.

I have felt and feel all the ugly things. Some, from time to time. Some, most days. Some way, somehow, along these many years, I learned to acknowledge them. “Oh, it’s you again. Thank you for participating. Now, scram. Get on down the road. I don’t need you.”

All I can tell you is that last night, after my private early morning cinema, instead of guilt and remorse and dread and such, I felt inundated with Grace. And Love. And Gratitude. In that soft, cushiony cloud, I fell back to sleep.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

July soon done

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Row, row, row your boat

 

            Row, row, row your boat

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Gently down the stream. Well, I try. I try to remember the water is moving. Downstream. Now and then I am compelled to turn my boat and battle the currents upstream. The currents always batter me back into submission. Well, I had to try.

Floating downstream is so much easier. Water is movement. Movement is change. Change is neither positive nor negative. Neither good nor bad. We give it those meanings, out of the experiences and perceptions, each according to how we choose to see it.

I am a master at taking a tiny bit of information, running it through my flawed interpreter and coming up with all kinds of meanings. I too often make a judgement based on this event I saw or words I heard. Big mistake. I have one piece of the 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle and describe to you the beautiful seaside when in reality the complete picture is a barnyard from the early 1800s.  As I said, I’m good and often wrong.

Just yesterday I opened my big mouth and blurted out, “As I see it, this is the situation, blah blah blah blah.” I meant this as a positive interpretation. Later, and isn’t it always after the horse has bolted the barn, that I revisit my words, astounded at how easily they could be taken to mean just the opposite, which could be hurtful.

I didn’t lose sleep over it but I did battle the current a few minutes. Today I had a chance to revisit my conversation and clarify my words. What I said, of course, could still be mis-interpreted. I cannot control that. But I sure feel better, gliding with the current again.

My friend and I continued our discussion, different flow, talking about changes here on the Rancho. While we row our boats down our own rivers, we don’t know what awaits around each bend. That is so for all of us, wherever we be, and for always.  

The Rancho owner is in poor health. She has children to number the fingers on both hands. What might happen? Oh, the possibilities, the rumors, the fears, the conjectures. We lease on a contract. How good is our contract? See what I mean. We can either relax and go with the flow, wait and see, or we can worry ourselves sick. Our choice.

Look around our world. One’s home could be lost in a flood, tornado, fire, tsunami, mudslide, sinkhole, alien abduction, termite infestation—do you need me to keep listing options—and, as a result, we all could be living in cardboard boxes under the bridge. Could happen. Who wants to live rowing your boat upstream on that river? This could be crazy-making.

Me, I figure I’ve a good chance of living here in my little slice of paradise until I cross the metaphorical bridge across the Big River. But I don’t know, do I?

One kind of change happened last night. Across the lane at Julie’s place, there has been a tall, rotten tree, limbed out years ago. Francisco planted a Leticia, a beautiful (and invasive) vine profuse with lovely blue flowers, to cling to the stump. I wrote a poem.

Last night

In the night a whump

Shook the ground

The dogs barked up a storm

The storm paid them no mind

Barking louder than the dogs

The weight of water on the blue

Flowered Leticia vine covering

The long hollowed out tree

Finally grounded the old man.

 

We will miss that beauty at the corner. When Julie and Francisco return, I know they will plant something even more beautiful and less likely to fall in the night.

Life is but a dream.

 

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

July with small rains most nights

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An honest love

 

An honest love

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Every day brings its own. Its own what? I can give that sentence a thousand different objects. It’s more fun to leave it open. Use your imagination.

Last night brought rain. I love lying in bed listening to the rainfall ping on the roof, plop on the potted palm outside my bedroom window. Rain thuds on the thick, waxy Avocado leaves, barely makes a sound on the Oleander.

Rain, heavenly rain. Finally rain comes to us, not a lot, not with sturm and drang, but rain comes, lovely steady, straight-down soaking rain. I stand out in the rain, raise my face and can almost feel my leaves grow. I speak metaphorically, in love with rain.

It’s an honest love, bred in the bone, handed down to me from generations of toilers of the soil.

Through my open windows last night while it rained, I could smell the flowering trees, the wet grass, the Magnolia that I thought had died but was resuscitated by the rains, the dirt, the damp. Ah, love.

Frequently in the night I hear my gecko. I say mine, but only because it managed to get into my house and make its home. There is plenty of food, ants, spiders, house centipedes. A gecko in the home is a treasure. Welcome home.

Another newcomer to my world is the tree frog in the Avocado. The first two nights, I thought its purpose must be to keep me awake. This is a noisy critter, all night long, noisy. At first an irritant, now that I’m used to its voice, blending with all the usual night sounds, the tree frog is a delight.

That’s the magical, romantic, dreamy part of my day. Then there is work.

Each day brings its own work, even though I am retired and have no specific schedule to follow. Each day brings a different work, often unexpected.

For years I’ve used sea salt for cooking, for seasoning my food. I like Celtic sea salt, the kind of sea salt that looks dirty. I prefer its flavor. To me, it does the best job of enhancing other flavors.

I’ve not found any tienda that sells it here and it seems that Mexico doesn’t allow it to be shipped in. I’ve tried. So when I run out of salt I’ve brought with me, I buy Pacific sea salt, which isn’t treated to stay dry. Salt attracts moisture. Even in my glass, air-tight containers, my salt is damp.

My friend Kathy just returned from France, a walking tour and long visit with her daughter. She brought me a pound of dirty sea salt, sopping wet.

Finally, turtle slow as I am to seek a solution, I searched for ways to dry the sea salt without damaging the mineral content. Should you ever run into this problem, it’s easy. Spread the salt on parchment paper and place it in a really low oven, ten minutes. Two rounds in the oven have dried my salt quite nicely and quite clumpily. I have a small mortar and pestle and after grinding away at the salt what seemed an inordinate amount of time, I ground out the clumps.

I filled my salt shaker, along with a spoonful of rice grains. Everybody knows rice will keep the salt in the shaker dry. I stored the rest of my newly dried salt in an air-tight glass container.

I do wonder about myself, about why I am content to deal with, to live with, to make do with things like wet salt until one day, for no observable reason, I decide to seek a way to make it better.

I still have a jar of wet salt. I only dried enough to use in the next couple months. I know if I were to dry all my salt, it is still untreated salt. Salt gathers moisture.

Meanwhile a cloud bank is building up in the northeast and another is rolling over the mountains to the west. Along with the scent of freshly mown grass, I smell rain a coming.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

July, finally raining

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It must have been something I ate.

 

It must have been something I ate.

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It seemed like it all happened at once. The heat broke. The rains came. And I spent the night hunched over the commode.

It is a wonderful thing when the heat breaks, more-so this year as we sweltered under an unrelenting heat bubble.

When the rains come, immediately the temperatures drop, twenty degrees this year. Plants of all species lift their heads and drink largely. Birds lift their beaks in the happiest of songs. Bugs of all descriptions line up outside my door, hoping for easy entry, all seeking a dry bed for the night.

The chicken stir-fry, graciously given to me by Tom next door, only had a couple leftover shrimps finely chopped into the entire huge panful of delicious goodness, not even enough for me to see the evidence. My stomach knew. Afterward.

This is a recent development in my life, this sensitivity to shrimp. Began about a year ago, after a sumptuous shrimp dinner at the elegant Restaurante Don Luis up the mountain. Proofed it with a dish of ceviche from another neighbor, the best I’ve ever eaten and I love ceviche. That was enough for me. I determined to never eat shrimp again. Nobody should ever be that sick.

This go-around it was invisible shrimp, innocently given and innocently received. Tom and Janet didn’t know I’d developed this reaction to shrimp and I didn’t know the chicken stir-fry, which I eagerly scarfed up, contained just that miniscule bit of the sea creature.

I did the thing I tell friends and family to avoid. I consulted the oracle of mis-information. It told me that one can develop allergies in old-age. It said, “Yes, Virginia, thou shalt eat no more of shellfish, including crustaceans and mollusks of any kind, or the by-products thereof.”

Shrimps, okay, I don’t mind. But no more crab cakes at JJ’s Fish House in Poulsbo. No more oysters on the half shell at the beach. No lobster. No calamari, no octopus, no clams. No scallops. The list is long.

It’s been several days, long enough for my plants to take on new life, for dead stalks to resurrect, for the sweetest gecko to take up residence in my house along the wall behind my computer desk.

I’m sure I’ll crawl out of my cave soon. This round of retching wiped out my entire physical system. I’ll get better. I will.

Please forgive me for popping in with a “Hi” and a “Bye”. It’s all I’ve got today.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door in July

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When does a cucumber become a pickle?

 

    When does a cucumber become a pickle?          

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Despite the fact that we here in Jalisco, Mexico are still sizzling in a seemingly never-ending, garden killing, daily breaking records heatwave, I promised myself not to write about weather today.

What else is there to write about? Ah, ha! Friendship.

Michelle’s sister Susan is here visiting for a few days, so the women asked if I’d like to go to breakfast with them the other morning. We decided to go to our favorite coffee shop, Molletes.

When they came to pick me up, Michelle and Susan bailed out of their car, and both came through my gate laden with bundles. Michelle was worried about me melting down to nothing in the daily afternoon sweat bath (no worries there) so she made me one of her now-famous swamp coolers.

They came with the whole megillah, Styrofoam cooler from Oxxo, cut for the fan and outlet tubes, bottles of frozen water, a small table fan. That, my friends, is friendship.

At Molletes we fixed the world over a meal, at least, our small worlds. We gals are pretty much open and trusting with our truths with one another, know we can spit it all out, get outraged, let it all hang out. Yet we had a gentle time, laughs and tears and goodness. We each have hurts, fears and difficulties and our being together was good medicine.

I took a deep breath and shared my travel plans, no date, for my next trip: bus five or six hours, each time to a destination I’ve not seen, a couple days in each city until I reach the border. Then the train to San Diego, train north to Seattle and my son, again, with stops to explore along the way. Finally train to Wolf Point and my daughter.

I took a deep breath because not everyone would see this as a good way to go. I’m more interested in the trip than controlling the itinerary. My friends got all excited. They became part of my adventure.

Michelle jumped in to describe the posh bus to Susan. Posh, not the chicken and goat bus. I’ve done that kind of bus once and once was enough. I’ll go with the luxury cruise.

Susan said, “You will meet so many great people along the way, because only great people travel that way.”

Then I admitted I am the only person in the known world without a smart phone. That threw a wrench into the works until I said, “Remember, only twenty years ago, this is how we all traveled.” Perspective. Ahhh. With that, my friends were again on board with me.

When I got home, I filled my Styrofoam container with bottles of frozen water, placed the fan face down to blow across the bottles and plugged in my new genius cooler, sat in front of it, and let the winds of fan-dom waft over me. While this invention will not cool the house, it is good for a couple hours of cooler time in the hot-hot-hot dog of the afternoon, feet up, book in hand.

See, I can do it. I can write without complaining about the heat and dying geraniums and loss of my magnolia tree. I can. I can.

What? Oh, that. Yeah, the title. When does a cucumber become a pickle? I had to call the article something. Let’s simply let that be our thought for the day.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

End of June and Still Too Hot

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Surviving the heat, some brain damage.

 

Surviving the heat, some brain damage.

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In Jalisco we are held fast in the grips of unrelenting heat and drought. As northeastern Montanans, we all know what that is like. Hot. Dry. Dusty. Depressing. Blue skies. Not a cloud in sight.

My tender magnolia flowers all dried up in the fragile bud, turned to brown dust without opening. Even with daily watering, vegetables I planted poked up their little slender heads, looked around, said, “No, not me, uh huh, no, and keeled over. “  As each bucket is harvested, I’m leaving them empty, fallow, waiting for a change. Maybe beans. I plant a few beans. No rains in sight.

The tough stuff is good; bouganvillia, hibiscus, several native type flowers, all bloom. Boug and hibiscus make lovely teas. I make sun tea every day but woman does not live by tea alone.

Every morning I get up earlier, now at 6:00. Temp usually around 68F and humidity in the upper nineties. Lola and I dawdle through our walk, come home and I plow into my chores and projects. My aim is to get done by noon. By noon, humidity and temperature are the morning numbers in reverse. Or higher.

My friend Michelle went to the Oxxo, think convenience store, and bought a cheap Styrofoam cooler. She lined the bottom with bottles of frozen water. Cut two holes in the side and duct taped in two tubes of PVC pipe, sticking out. Cut a hole in the top and inserted a small table fan, face down. Voila! The swamp cooler works!

My solution is multiple daily showers plus inertia. And stay hydrated. Water, water, water. Stand. Soak. Drink. Drink. Drink.

Idle afternoons lead to wild thoughts, most of which land in the discard pile. If I had paid more attention in chemistry class, maybe I’d find the way to bring my brilliant ideas into completion. Like this one; if I could scrape my skin several times a day and crystalize the scrapings, I’d never have to buy salt again. Brilliant, yes?

Leo was here watering for me this morning. I’d been in deep thought. What really, really, really wants to grow in extreme heat? “Leo, what if you rototill up the back yard, plant one toranja tree (Grapefruit, I really want a grapefruit tree.) and plant the rest of the yard into a melon field.”

You’ve never tasted watermelon or cantaloupe until you’ve tasted one fresh from the field here.

Leo looked at me and responded with one emphatic, “No! Sondrita, has the heat fried your brain?”

The young man has no imagination. Since I need his help, I’ll chip away at him. Personally, I think the idea of a melon patch just as brilliant as Michelle’s swamp cooler.

“If not melons, let’s plant agave.” Leo gave me what my children called “The Look”. I think he learned it from me.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

Too hot to move in June

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