Making Home

 

        Making Home

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In the third week in my new casa just up the road a ways from my old casa, I am making home. In ways this is like baking a cake. It is not a one-step process. It is not a box mix. The moving van (non-existent) does not pull up, put boxes in marked rooms, and roll on down the highway while I make the bed and go to sleep.

Oh, if only it were so simple. Bit by bit though, this cake batter of a home is coming together.  While there is still a lot to do, let’s call this a complicated cake, it is coming together in ways that blend efficiency, ease of use with beauty and comfort. Keep adding ingredients and mixing well and the batter eventually pops into the oven and becomes cake. Home.

Yesterday John and Carol, snowbirds from Minnesota and friends who also have a casa in Gringolandia, which is what we in Oconahua call the little enclave of residents at the Rancho, came to visit, to see my new home.

I watched the looks of wonder on Carol’s face as she took my tour, kept exclaiming, “Oh, Sondra. Oh, Sondra. This is so nice. This is so perfect for you.”

Before John and Carol left, she whispered, “Now I won’t worry about you any more.”

I don’t know what she was expecting but I my imagination of Carol’s imagination knocked on the door of a tiny hovel, one room with bed, bath and stove. The end.

Leaving the cake in the metaphorical oven, let’s segue to Goldilocks and know that the home I make is just right. Just big enough. Just beautiful enough. Just roomy enough. And, bonus, I still live a goodly portion of my day outdoors on my just-right patio surrounded with just-enough plants.

To borrow from days of Radio yore with Paul Harvey, so what’s the rest of the story? Because we know, there is more to this than everything is “just right”, right?

No internet. No phone.

That’s not all bad. Think about it. Three weeks with no news, no horrors, no news, no sales pitches, no news. Not all bad.

But, oh, the inconvenience. The lost touches with friends and family. We are so used to instant access. I am so used to instant access. I want my Telmex and I want it now!

I don’t get what I want when I want it. Instead, I get the clipity-clop as men on horseback ride past on my narrow street. I get the daily sound of the water truck delivering drinking water. I get dogs barking and chickens clucking and my neighbor across the way practicing his trombone and neighborhood children laughing.

Guess what? I want my Telmex and I want it now!

Sondra Ashton

Havre Daily News

December

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This year I’m the turkey!

 

This year I’m the turkey!

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I am living in my new home in Oconahua these few days, surrounded with decisions, mind changes, piles and stacks of books, dishes, food, turning in circles, where to put, what to do, which next. For this I am Thankful.

I’m not brilliant, but I’m not stupid. When I get crowded into this corner, I know what to do. I go outside to my patio shady spot and sit and watch the hummingbirds, birds I cannot identify, ever-present vultures overhead, let the breeze clear my head. For this I am Thankful.

This is an unusually warm autumn for us, 55F in the mornings and 85F the afternoon high. I don’t mean to gloat, much, but for this I am Thankful.

I don’t have internet yet, so once a day I go to my neighbor’s casa where my laptop has resided on their red wooden breakfast table, read, respond, delete emails as necessary. For this I am Thankful.

Little by little, yet more quickly than I had imagined, shade cloth hangs over a sunny area, bamboo pots are moved into place, my clothesline, lovely umbrella clothesline is lashed to a fence post embedded in concrete, the last loads of all that I own delivered via Leo’s father’s cuppa-truck. For all these little delights I am Thankful.

After a first icy shower, Michelle came over with her ladder, knew what to do having experienced the same, installed a different showerhead and “Voila!” Hot water to scald my skin. For this I am Thankful.

My doggy Lola gets to play with Paco and Monkey every day out in the common area (Monkey is her sister. We live next door to the folks who let me adopt Lola.) For this she is Thankful. As am I.

In the evening I climb the stairway to roof to watch the sunset, the panorama of mountains, fields of shocked corn, the eucalyptus grove to the west just beyond the arroyo, neighbor’s rooftops. For this I am Thankful.

Everyday a new experience. Guests arrive in the guise of joy, despair, hope, disappointment, wonder, wet doggy tongues, laughter, friendship. I welcome them, teachers, each to show me some new facet of self. For this I am (albeit sometimes reluctantly) Thankful.

In my new home, despite some-going-in-turkey circles, I’ve created enough order to feel at home, to cook my meals, to sleep peacefully at night. For this I am Thankful. 

Thanksgiving Day I will have dinner with Ana and Michelle and Crin and Leo. I will bring fresh bread rolls and not-so-traditional mango pie. Michelle managed to find a turkey. Dinner will be a mix of cultural delights and stories and filled plates quickly emptied and love. For this I am Thankful.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

Thanksgiving, 2024

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Two Longs and a Short

 

 

                                                Two Longs and a Short

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It hung in the kitchen in the house in which we lived, on a farm outside New Winchester, Indiana, the first telephone of my memory, a wooden oak box which hung rather high on the wall. My Dad took down the ear piece which hung onto the right side of the box, connected by a short cord and leaned toward the black Bakelite cone and shouted into the mouthpiece in the center front. He turned the handle on the right a few turns. A grinding noise alerted the operator that somebody wanted to be connected, either on our line or the dreaded long distance.

Our ring was two longs and a short. Every ring on our line was distinct so we knew whom of our neighbors was receiving a call. We also knew when a neighbor picked up their earpiece to listen in to our calls. Precursor to Facebook.

In our next house, on a farm between Laconia and Elizabeth in the Ohio River hills, we had the traditional black Bakelite office-type phone. Easy to use. Those old phones lasted forever, never had to be replaced. Same party line. Same nosey neighbors.

Then the Princess phone emerged, a product of imaginative style and merciless marketing, and everyone had to, just had to, have one.

Oh, yes, the dreaded long distance. Even in his later years, my Dad seldom called me, several states away, unless somebody in the family or a close neighbor had died.

We used a telephone judiciously, when necessary, with forethought. A telephone was a tool.

We’ve come a long way, baby. Today a telephone is seldom used to talk to another person. It is a data processing machine, implanted into one’s palm, to be replaced annually, and if contacting another actual person, we don’t talk, we text. Or less. Send an incomprehensible, to me, emoji, eliminating the necessity for actual words.  Amazing, that!

Dinosaur that I am, texting, along with other social media, mystifies me.  People can be whomever you want them to be, until you meet them. We tell ourselves these stories. As long as we don’t actually talk, really talk, to the other person, we can keep building our stories.

I digress. What started me on this line of thought about telephones was fear. Fear that I would lose my land line in my move. Dinosaur, remember. I like a land line. They are still handy for some few things, at least, here in Mexico.

When I’m on a telephone, I picture you on the other end, know your voice, your facial expressions, your body language. I feel connected, even long distance.

Ana, Michelle, Crin and I drove to Tequila to the regional Telmex office, each of us with a wish. We each have learned not to become too invested in our wishes. After two hours of face-to-face conversation with the lovely woman in the Telmex office, we left the office with smiles on our faces.

All of this is with Ana’s good help as interpreter, negotiator, and conveyer of our wants.

Crin will have wi-fi service at her house, without having to piggyback onto one of ours. What you must understand that for years different people here have tried and failed to get a line.

Ana got to cancel a service she no longer needed.

She and Michelle got to upgrade another service that they use.

I get to take my account with me and, if the planets are lined up right, retain my same phone number at my new house, even though it is in a different town. Another unheard of, unimaginable impossibility, to move a service 10 K up the road to a different town and retain the same number. Impossible.

Cue the woo-woo music here. We felt as if we slipped into a parallel universe, and in a business office, no less! I’d understand if it were through the back of a wardrobe, perhaps in company with a lion and a witch. Perhaps, oh, never mind.

The challenge will be to stay inside this magical place while four different technicians show up with work orders to make the changes. Might happen. Might not happen.

After a short drive back into the real world, in the center of the city by the Plaza, we ate bang-up excellent meals at a lovely and expensive restaurant in Tequila. We did, however, leave the tequila in Tequila.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

November 21, 2024

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The Adventures of the Gallant Clothesline

 

The Adventures of the Gallant Clothesline

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Once upon a time, in the far northern reaches of China, bordering Mongolia, there lived a beautiful princess. Oh, wait, wrong story. Start again.

Once upon a time, in the far northern reaches of China, bordering Mongolia, a factory dedicated to producing the best umbrella clotheslines in the world, meticulously began to piece together the very Prince of All Clotheslines.

Disclosure: Parts of this story have been fictionalized. However the main thread of the story is absolute truth.

In all innocence, unaware of consequences which would surround my decisions, I began looking for an umbrella-style clothesline suitable for my next life chapter, in which all my living space shrinks.

I kept returning to the (Yikes!) model which cost (Yikes!) much more than the other models flanking it left and right. My chosen model is made of steel rather than aluminum. Maybe it wouldn’t matter. I batted around pros and cons with friends who know no more about this style appliance than I do. Finally, I ordered it, ordered the (Yikes!) model I most wanted.

I waited for confirmation of my order. Waited. Waited. Finally, I got a message from the Big A that if I did not get confirmation from the supplier within a certain number of days, I should cancel my order. This message did not instill confidence. No, no, no.  But, I wanted this model. I waited. Waited. Waited.

Meanwhile, back at the factory in the far north reaches of China, bordering Mongolia, workers began meticulously piecing together the poles and slides and strings on what would become the most Princely of all Umbrella-style Clotheslines. With each piece of the Umbrella Puzzle, the dedicated workers explained to the clothesline, that it would find a new home in which it would be expected to outperform all others models of same. They whispered to the pieces and parts, that they would be appreciated, that the newly formed umbrella would find honor in rising to its highest function. You have my word for this.

Finally, before the deadline, I got a message that confirmed my order. I even got an expected delivery date. Whew.  

This was last month.

The delivery date came. The delivery date passed on by, as dates tend to do. It long passed. It passed.

I waited. I waited.

Meanwhile, this Most Honorable of All Clotheslines was battling its way to my arms, adventure after adventure.

Upon leaving the factory, my clothesline had to endure the grumbling of the Grumbliest of All Camels crossing the great Gobi Desert, enduring sandstorms, battling sandworms, oops, sorry, different story again, but you get the picture. It wasn’t easy.

Finally, across the desert, through villages, crossing rivers, my Brave Clothesline reached the Sea where it boarded a Sampan and crossed the Wide Pacific Ocean, through typhoons, dodging hurricanes, and weary but undaunted, landed on the Shores of Nayarit in Mexico.

Almost home, almost. First, it found itself tied onto the back of a little brown burro which bowed its willing head and set off on trails up, up, up and over the Sierra Madre Occidental Mountains. Up and over and down and down and down, through Nayarit into Jalisco. Brave little burro.

Finally, today, my clothesline was delivered to my own door, a little weary, somewhat battered but undamaged and glad to find a home. Not an easy trip but remember, it has nerves of steel.

I will love my Princely Clothesline which has travelled half the known world to reach my arms. I will honor my Clothesline. I promise to Cherish my Prince of a Clothesline.

The End.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

November 14, 2024

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My Circle of Gold

 

My Circle of Gold

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My friends, I don’t have a story for today. Instead, I’ll send a poem. It is raw, fresh and flawed, but I no longer care about flaws.

I’ve been thinking a lot about love. Remember how we used to say “Make love, not war”? Today my chant would be, “Make love, not hate”.

Love is difficult, takes careful consideration, time, decisions. That’s my experience. I’m so fortunate to have known and to know so much love. I’m human. I get angry, frustrated, irritated at my friends, but love is bigger and I love you anyway. Why not? You continue to love me. So here is my love poem for today.

“Sondra, you need a man in your life,”

Says my young, young friend. I laugh.

“Are you applying for the job, Pool Boy?”

My rejoinder. I am the only woman,

Living alone, in a tiny community,

In a foreign country, a dozen or so

Snowbirds, who come and go,

Willy-nilly. Most of the year I am

The only gringo. I don’t feel alone.

I grew up as if an only child, although

I had a sister. I’ve been married,

Have children, grandchildren to love.

Now I’m an old woman, comfortable

With whom I am, alone.

I’ve had a full life.

Took years of aloneness

To learn not to be lonely

With whom I am alone.

Around me, near and far, a circle

Of quiet people, fluid with comings

And goings. These, you, have become

The ring on my finger,

My circle of gold.

 

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

November 7, 2024

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Wreck on the Communications Railroad

 

            Wreck on the Communications Railroad

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In each life it seems there might be one or two individuals with whom, no matter how hard we try, we simply cannot communicate. We usually marry them.

Seriously, if nothing else, we surround ourselves with people of like mind. We act together in ways beneficial to both parties. We are on the same track, click-clacking to the same destination.

However, now and then we encounter a person with whom out tongue jumps the track, derails, stops at the wrong station, or otherwise completely mucks up what started as a smooth ride.

Presently I’m trying to negotiate a small business deal with such a person. I don’t think it is the fault of either of us. If I say left, she hears right. If she says up, I hear down. Makes it really hard to stay on the rails. It’s even harder to keep imagination under control and not let that creative entity wreck the whole process.

Putting aside the latest attempt to get somewhere involving a stranger and money, I went out to my washing machine to grab the load of sheets only to find water on the patio and dry sheets in the tub.

My washing machine had broken down. Hopefully, it is a small thing, easily fixed.

I put the sheets into my laundry trolley and went inside to email my friend Kathy, with whom I have great communications, a friend of 24 or 25 years. We come close to being able to mind read with one another.

We both prefer email to telephone, maybe because neither of us lives with one of those things glued to our body. So, keep in mind, most of the following was by email.

“Kathy, my machine broke. May I use the washer in Crin’s bodega?” Crin is Kathy’s sister and when she isn’t here, Crin wants me to use her machine periodically, just to keep it friendly.

“Sure. I’ll go unlock the bodega.”

I trotted over with my trolley. The bodega was locked. So I went back home, left the trolley there. I would return in 15 minutes or so.

I went to my computer to answer another friend’s email. There was a new message from Kathy. “I’m flat out on the couch. I’ve got vertigo. Don’t know what is going on.”

“Okay. No problem. Ana and Michelle are coming over. I’ll send my laundry home with them.”

So I trudged back to the bodega to get my sheets and the bodega door was open, light on, so I went ahead and filled the tub and started the washer. Kathy must have unlocked the door for me, gone back to her house and collapsed.

I didn’t worry about it because Kathy would see my empty laundry trolley and know that we’d just slid past on different tracks, side by side.

Following my visit with Ana and Michelle, I walked back to get my laundry. The bodega door was shut and locked.

Back home, I checked my computer and the email from Kathy said, “Okay. I’ll lock the bodega.”

That was strange, not like Kathy at all, but she was not her usual healthy self.

I went over to Kathu’s house. “Hello oo oo.”

“Kathy, when I found the bodega open, I put laundry in the machine. Now it is locked. My sheets are hostage.”

Together we walked back to Crin’s, with keys. “I had Richard lock the bodega.”

“Oh. That explains it clearly. Richard would not see the trolley, would not hear the machine swishing the clothes. He would simply lock the door as you asked, right?”

“You said it.” We laughed. I retrieved my laundry.

See how easily the train jumped tracks with a good friend of years?

No wonder if is more difficult with a stranger, with two people who know nothing of each other.

This is a pretty silly example, trite, inconsequential. It is too easy to add inflammatory elements such as runaway imagination, anger, hurt pride, greed, self-righteousness. Think global. Plunk in a few nuclear weapons, geo-political feuds of centuries standing, power lust, the impossibility of accurately translating many phrases, cultural misunderstandings. The list is endless.

Yes, Virginia, it is possible for two freight trains, running full steam ahead, to crash in a tunnel.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

October 31, 2024

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A Gusty Autumn Day

 

A Gusty Autumn Day

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The northeast wind doth blow! Just like that, fall is no longer on the way but has arrived.

This is not our prevailing wind but is our October wind, here in Etzatlan, Jalisco. Not that much can be said to prevail these uncertain days.

Conditions here are generally mild. This morning the winds are at 6-7 mph, gusting to 25! For us, this is windy!

I love autumn. One thing I love most is that the air carries whiffs of spices. Spicy scents seem to be layered, to waft around my patio, to make love to my nose. Flowers, trees, grasses, all smell spicy in October, each day, each hour, a different mix.

From the 20^th until the end of the month, our town celebrates Festival Days. Depending on one’s whims, this annual celebration is a time of thanksgiving and blessings or one whoop-up party or, likely, a combination. Festival is a time of parades and processions, most of them beginning and ending at the Cathedral and the Plaza.

Streets are closed to auto traffic. A Carnival for the children dominates several blocks. The center of town feels like a street bazaar with vendors hawking jewelry, clothing, artisan craft-ware, toys, pretty much anything and everything.

Food purveyors make various specialties in front of your eyes, hand-patting tortillas, filling tacos, cutting into the centers of coconuts, lifting hot empanadas out of ovens, pouring decadent crepes, stirring vats of birria, selling tamales out of buckets, whetting every appetite.

Horses, the most beautiful horses in the world, parade, perform, and dance to every music. Music. Bands march, play, compete. Some of the music is quite good. All of the music is loud.

Each day begins with a bang. Fireworks celebrate the sun. Around 11 in the evening, vendors, families with sleeping children, dancers, and musicians prepare to go home for the night, but gather in the plaza for the finale, elaborate displays of fireworks, dancing colors.

Last night I hardly slept, not because of the music, audible from town, nor from the fireworks, always audible. Every time I drifted off, a gust of wind knocked another avocado from the tree outside my bedroom window, to crash into the yellow oleander below or onto my rock garden or most loudly, onto the concrete patio surround, each landing a different auditory explosion.

This morning I started out with a bucket to pick up all the fallen fruits for the trash when I realized it would be a suicide mission to walk below that tree on a windy day. The tree tops out at a good 30’. Imagine a hefty football-shaped missile, 5-6” long and 3-4” high, a dense fruit, landing on your head.

Michelle told me that we would call this native variety pear avocados. I call them footballs. My Haas avocado tree succumbed to the heat dome just when it was getting vigorous, ready to produce. Joys of small-scale farming.

Instead of risking my life under the attack tree, I decided to make teriyaki sauce in the safety of my kitchen. Woman does not live on Mexican food alone. Another scent to add to the air while my mixture simmered to reduce to the consistency I wanted. I had to close one window to prevent the flame from being blown out beneath the bubbling sauce.

While gathering ingredients for the teriyaki sauce, I noticed with my eagle-eye bug-check vision, that my garbanzo beans, in a glass jar, seemed speckled. Bean bugs. I took the jar of beans and bugs to the outside garbage, away from the house, to dump them.

I keep all my food in glass jars to prevent bug infestations. Even so, if one bean has a bug, they all have bugs. I check my jars regularly. Bean bugs seem to find it exciting to scoot around the winding lips of the jar lid and into the trails of the neighboring jar, perhaps their version of a Tilt-a-Whirl. From one jar to another. If that happens, one might as well bring the large garbage can inside and empty the cupboard, hazmat suit in place, fumigation gear at hand.

Once before, when I didn’t know the necessary routine for eradication, I dumped a jar of infested beans into my garbage bin under the kitchen sink. Bean bugs terrorized my kitchen for months. Never again, I say.

Mid-afternoon.  Wind has shifted from the southeast, a steady 7 mph with gusts to 27. It’s a great evening for a stir-fry with a side of avocado.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

October 24, 2024

10 24, 2024

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Old Dog, New Tricks

 

Old Dog, New Tricks

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Scritch, scratch, scrape, scratch, scritch. Chips flying. Breathing dust. I really should have eye protectors.

I cannot believe I am doing this job. Just last week, just days ago, I told you I do anything to avoid using sandpaper. Here I am, sanding down metal rocking chairs, one pair so old that the only thing holding them together might be the paint. I proceed cautiously, dust up my nose, in my hair, in the fibers of my clothing. Oh, well. Must be done.

It was not my idea. Kathy and Richard are the first pair of snowbirds to arrive for the winter. Kathy, bless her perfectionist heart, suggested that since I’ve slathered everything else I own with a bright, new layer of life, the rockers deserve a similar renewal.

I could have nodded my head and ignored her. But, no, I could hear the rockers squeaking out, “Me too! Me too!” Green, I’m thinking. Shades of green. With that thought I am doomed.

First, I must make the job tolerable. This I do by covering my hands. Something about the texture of sandpaper, my sensitive finger skin finds intolerable. I have nice leather gloves but I know that before I make one chair decent enough for paint, my good leather will have holey fingers, that is, with holes, not sanctification. Fortunately, in my bathroom supplies, I have a large box of nitrile gloves. The life of a glove, at most, is half an hour. Tolerable.

My rockers are metal, outside chairs, and, as such, have been sitting in the weather, enduring these nine years of intense UV sun rays and pounding rain. They are faded, chipped and peeled in places down to the original, down to rust.

True to myself, I picked the most difficult looking chair to start, one with 5 layers of old paint.  Three hours into the job, with sandpaper, a knife and a wanna-be wire brush, my chair looked downright scabby. I’d swept three cups of chair paint debris from beneath my work table. Time is flexible. I will continue to scratch-scratch until I deem the chair ready for paint.

As the pile of discarded nitrile gloves mounted, I’d quit measuring paint dust/chip debris.

Meanwhile, my attitude to the dreaded job had changed. I won’t say I loved it, but by focusing on the transformation of the poor neglected and abused chair, what I can sing is this: You gotta have heart, miles and miles and miles of heart . . . there’s nothing to it but to do it . . . You gotta have heart.

Thank you, Eddie Fisher. And just like that, the work doesn’t seem to be half as hard. Even smarmy lyrics send me encouragement from the past.

Monday morning I engaged Leo for a quick trip to the hardware store. I left armed with heavy-duty work gloves, safety glasses, and a real wire brush. At the Comex I bought heavy-duty sandpaper and four vibrant paints, flowers in jewel tones, Bougainvillea that hang over my garden wall, plus one leafy green, one paint for each chair. 

Back to work, with better tools, I quickly discovered that something had shifted, perhaps only within myself, but the shift felt monumental. These poor, abused and much neglected rocking chairs had become my teachers. When I go slowly enough,  even inanimate objects speak clearly.

I had been holding up a good front about my coming move. My battered chairs showed me my edges of fear and trepidation, to move, to change, during the end-days of my life. As fear feeds fear, it grew, without me noticing.

My new home will be vibrant with splashes of color, each color a flower, my new garden, singing loudly with joy. Now I know, I can feel, deep in my heart of hearts, this move will be good for me, will give me, even now is giving me, the capacity to change, to begin again, a new chapter in my life book.

As I scratch-scratched away old paint, my sensitive hands protected with new gloves, I sensed the chairs showing me that even I, creaky and rusty as I am, can shine with new life.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

October 17, 2024

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Fighting Fear of Boredom

 

    Fighting Fear of Boredom

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Often I say that I am never bored. It’s true. Always I find plenty to do, things that I enjoy and want to do. Fortunately, I grew up learning to like whatever I am doing. I give credit to the good Sisters at St. Joseph’s. Even today I take pleasure in plunging my hands into warm dishwater or ironing creases into my cotton pants.

I’m not pure or perfect. I dislike touching sandpaper and a lot of things in my home would be better detailed had I not skipped a crucial step in a process of smoothing. I manage to rationalize ways to avoid a good number of my dislikes.

My new house, to which I will move, is finished. Before I move, two things need to happen. The patio roof needs to be built to protect my patio furniture from mountain UV rays, severe year round, not to mention sun and rain. And, my little section of yard must be fenced, to keep Lola, my pooch of various pedigree, from stress.

The owners of my new casita rescue dogs. Lola is quite happy, alone, protecting me and her own little kingdom, behind a wall. Or a wrought iron fence. The fence will keep Lola in and the other dogs out, although only a couple at a time are allowed in the common area. 

Consequently, it will be at least another month before I can finish my move. I’ve packed and moved every single thing that can be pre-moved and am living with my Buddha bowl, metaphorically. It’s not that bad, but every other day I realize I should have kept this or that or the other thing.

I’ve run out of things to do, to pack, to paint, to renovate, pre-move. At the beginning of the month, did you hear the calendar page turn and look out to see the leaves on the Fresno trees turn golden overnight? Did you hear me wailing, “October will go down in my personal history as the only month in which I was ever bored.”?

In my family, we do not do boredom. Thank you, Sister Mary John B. Thank you, Grandma.

Ask my children. They will tell you. Once and once only, each of them said, “Mom, I am bored.’” I swiveled my head and squatted down to their level, and gently said, “Oh, good. Here is a list of things with which I need you to help me.”

My kids might tell this story a little differently. They swear that my brown eyes turned flashing red and green, that my teeth grew into fangs, my fingers into claws and I exuded the stench of a fiery pit, as I gave them orders fit for road workers from a Louisiana prison in the 1800s, complete with snaps of a bull whip. Don’t you believe it. They made up their story. Pure fantasy. Fangs and claws, indeed.

When I was a child, boredom was not yet a popular concept. My words were, “I don’t have anything to do.” My Grandma was matter of fact. “Good. Start with washing and oiling and polishing the base boards.” In our 1920’s farm house, every room had base boards, about six inches high.

Interestingly, although I still did all the jobs Grandma gave me to do, I never again ran out of things to do on my own. Nor did my own children ever more than once suffer from ubiquitous boredom.

Along about the first part of October, I began fearing boredom. To counteract the fear, I gave myself a job. Washing windows. My house has more windows than walls. I live outside while inside. There are eleven large arched sets of windows to wash. Typically, this can take several days.

And it did. I eked out window washing three days. Along with other chores and opportunities which seemed to magically pop up. Here it is the 10^th of October, and my fear of boredom is unfounded. Thus far.

Each evening, like the good Shoemaker in the Fairy Tale, I lay out my job for tomorrow, hoping the elves will come and finish the job for me. The elves have not arrived yet, but I live in hope. And, so far, I’m not bored.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

October 10, 2024

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Rearranging Deck Chairs on the Titanic

 

            Rearranging Deck Chairs on the Titanic

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I am writing this, talking about this hard subject, for you, for that one person out there who needs to hear that you are not alone.

This is a topic nobody wants to talk about. Me, included. Let’s sweep it under the rug and pretend that lump isn’t real.

I’ve lost my son. Again. Last time I lost him, the County Sheriff picked him up in a ditch, beat up with broken bones, a backpack containing heroin and other contraband. Landed in jail. The County had a special program, unique, and he volunteered for it, wanted to get clean. It was a great program, combining individual and group counseling, work, AA and NA meetings, physical help, and more.

Once he left jail, the program continued with counseling, a safe house, a job, meetings, a rigorous routine.

From there this man, my son, managed to put together several years of sobriety. It wasn’t easy for him. He didn’t go back to his prestigious IT job. Bit by bit, we, family and friends, saw him getting better.

Then a couple years ago, we began to see troubling signs. Stories that didn’t quite make sense. But we wanted them to be true, right, so we made allowances. He quit going to meetings. He pushed away friends. A year and a half ago he quit talking with me. I had been questioning some of his decisions, those few I knew about, long distance. When he quit talking, I knew he was using.

Why am I writing about this now? Well, I just heard from a relative, some ugly details of my son’s life. Broke my heart all over again. Oh, yes, I knew he was using. But in the last couple years, I’d managed to compartmentalize the pain. Living 2500 miles away helps.

Two years ago his situation was bad. Now it is beyond ugly and desperate. One knows it is desperate when one hopes and prays that one’s son lands back in jail rather than die in a ditch. That may sound brutal. I don’t know if he will claw his way out of the pit he’s dug for himself. He can, if he asks for help. If.

My understanding is that to those who are vulnerable to it, heroin is like the ultimate bliss. My son, himself, told me that he never forgets, that nothing ever measures up to what he feels on the drug, that it sings a continual siren song.

There is help. For the User. For the Family. If my son had continued to surround himself with friends who didn’t use, had stayed in the job with people in recovery who valued him and supported him, continued with his counselors, gone to meetings, reached out to others who needed his story, had continued contact with his family . . .

This could have been a different story, right?

One of the ways I take care of myself, while crying and allowing myself to feel the pain, to feel it more deeply perhaps, is to throw myself into work.  Physical work is balm, for me.

I will take care of myself. I will not allow his addiction to crush me. I know that I didn’t cause it, I cannot cure it, and I cannot control it. 

So that is why I set about rearranging deck chairs on my own Titanic. I’m between homes at present, closing down my life in my little casa in Etzatlan, moving to another small casa up the road in Oconahua.

My house was a jumbled mess but I had figured to live in the mess a few more weeks. Then when my son was brought back before me in techni-color detail, I began doing what I know to do. Physical work. I decided to make these last few weeks in this house as comfortable as possible.

I rearranged the furniture, the clothing and food items, some of which I had stashed in boxes, the few patio items I had not moved. I worked until my legs, my back, my arms hurt. Compared to the pain in my heart, physical pain was a comfort. One day of hard labor and I felt better. The heart hurt will never entirely go away. I’ve learned how to live with it. (Counseling, sharing, friends, my Higher Power, see above.)

I will not stop loving my son. He’s my 47-year-old baby. I will not allow him to tear apart my life. It’s hard. It hurts. Heroin is a Destroyer. We do not have to let it destroy us and our family. I’m not giving up. Nobody, but nobody, has to go down with the ship.

Whoever needs to hear this: You are not alone. I hear you. I care. I love you.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

October 3, 2024

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Changes? What changes?

 

            Changes? What changes?

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My morning readings include a short poem by Rumi as translated by Coleman Barks. One morning this past week, I read:

Who makes these changes?

I shoot an arrow right.

It lands left.

I ride after a deer

And find myself chased by a hog.

I plot to get what I want

And end up in prison.

I dig pits to trap others

And fall in.

I should be suspicious

Of what I want.

 

And that pretty much says it. My life in a nutshell.

Rumi has not become my daily horoscope. Some days his words mean nothing to me. Some days he is incomprehensible, like reading mud in my path.

As I’ve become older, some days I actually am able to think, let’s just see what happens, rather than wanting this way or that way and plotting to get it. Wanting, along with wanting to know the outcome ahead of time, is a pit so familiar to me that I’ve hung pictures on the walls and made the pit cosy.

It’s been a Rumi week for me. Another day the poet reminded me that it is good to take time before making decisions. Ha! Another trap I know intimately. He tells me to sniff like a dog. Throw a dog something to eat and he sniffs to see if he wants it. Me, I tend to face-plant into my wants. Rumi says to me, sniff, take three days, then decide. Three days! Is that not forever?

Another day the poet counseled constant slow movement, like a small creek that does not stagnate. Slowly, slowly, one step at a time. Ah.

That day I replied, “I think I will. Slowly. Step. Step. Step. Slowly. No decisions. No wants. Just wait to see what unfolds in front of me.”

 

Maybe Rumi is my Daily Horoscope.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my backdoor

September 26, 2024

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Might be this, might be that.

 

Might be this, might be that.

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The longer I live, the less certain I am about anything. In fact, when I detect certainty in my thinking, I immediately stop and investigate to find the flaw.

You’ve all met Leo. He works in my yard a couple half-days a week. Leo is much more than a garden worker. I’ve come to depend on Leo for all manner of help. He is a gentle man, educated, generous, and has a brilliant sense of humor. Over time, he’s come to seem a grandson to me. He trusts me enough to tell me when he thinks I am wrong and that’s a huge compliment.

I’m the only one of us who lives here on the rancho without a partner and the only one since the pandemic who lives here constantly year round. That may have served to cement our friendship. Leo shows up most mornings to ask if I need anything. He’s my taxi driver, shopper, legal advisor, all-around helper. He has a big heart. Sometimes I call him Mother Leo.

We were sitting on my patio, me telling a story from when I lived in Mazatlan. Suddenly Leo leaned forward and said, “Sondra, you have . . . “ and here he used an expression, a masculine anatomical term, which I thought was pure Montana but perhaps is pure Mexican and crossed the border north centuries past. After all, Mexico has written history centuries longer than Montana’s.

The expression means courage so I’ll use that word. “Sondra, you have big courage. You are alone. You are old. (The young man is brutally truthful.) When you need to make a change, you just make it. You moved to Mazatlan. Then to Etzatlan. And now you are going to move to Oconahua. Alone. You have big, huge courage.”

I know a compliment when I see one so, taking no offense, I said, “Thank you.” Graciously.

However, my mind was quietly thinking otherwise. My mind spit out words such as flighty, loose cannon, loco-loco.

It’s true though. When a situation becomes untenable for various reasons, I’ve learned to make a change. If opportunity beckons elsewhere, I’ve learned to make a change.

Every decision carries its own consequences. For me, that has nothing to do with right or wrong. I could go. I could stay. I could move one step left. Or right.

That sounds so smug and smarmy. It actually took six years of terror, being afraid to do anything, not “allowed” any decisions, to give me the strength to break free. Every move or change since has been relatively easy, easy only in comparison to the years I call “Chicago Time”.

Leo went on to say about himself, “Me, I’m a big chicken. I’m scared to change. Friends tell me I need to break away from here, to get a job to use my education and skills. I’m chicken. I’d love to work in one of the big resorts on the Gulf Coast. I’d be good at helping people, at managing a crew. I would like that work. But my family is important to me. I don’t want to leave family.”

Immediately, I felt guilt. I’m one of the people who’d said, “Go, move, do something for yourself.”

In that moment, I saw that I had been wrong to urge change for Leo. I don’t know what is best for this young man.

“Leo,” I said, “You know what is best for you. You are the only one who knows what is best. If living here, helping us, being here for each of us, for your family, your friends, feeds your soul, who are we to say that’s not enough? You have no idea the value you give us. We don’t express our appreciation as often as we think it. If your circumstances change, if the time comes for you to make a big change, you will know. That is also courage.”

I’ve often thought that in different times or circumstances, Leo would have been a priest. He ministers quietly, without fanfare, to us, to his family, his neighbors. If you want to see the consequences of his ministry, just take a short trip into town with him. Everybody knows Leo. Leo gives of himself, no matter where he is. That is who he is.

Fool? Wise? Chicken? Courageous? By whose definition? Might be this. Might be that.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

September 19, 2024

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It was a dark and sleepless night.

 

It was a dark and sleepless night.

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It was a dark and sleepless night, not a storm cloud in sight.

I did the usual when I don’t sleep. I gazed out the window. Turned from my right side to my left side. Threw back the blanket. Turned from my left side to my right side. Pulled up the blanket and tucked it around me, a cocoon. Too many times.

Sensible people, I am told, get up and do something. Binge on Netflix. Scrub the toilet. Read until their eyeballs fall out. Work an entire book of Sudoku. Drink a bottle of Old Grandad. Do something.

Not me. I lie in bed, very awake, and let my mind entertain me.

My mind thinks it knows everything. It doesn’t. It also thinks it is invincible. It thinks when I die it will go on living. We, me and my mind, have had conversations about this kind of stuff.  

We listened to road traffic. Car. Truck. Car. Big truck with jake brakes. There are a few haulers who like to race up to the first tope (speed bump) and slam the brakes. Evidently that satisfies something in their psyche. I wouldn’t know. I’m not a trucker.

In Etzatlan, I live a block off the highway, just off the edge of town limits.

In Oconahua, I will live on the far side of town, no highway in sight, on a cobble street going up the mountain to nowhere, among the last houses, no traffic. Please, soon.

I listen to the night birds, the tree frogs, to something that might be a kind of cricket.

My mind wants to visit the past. We argue. It wants to visit dark times I want to forget. I want to visit more pleasant memories. Why are the good times harder to hold onto, harder to dredge up the details?

In this tug of war, I roll over and toss off the blanket. Whoosh, a ripe avocado falls from the tree outside my bedroom window, through a crumple of thick leaves making a bumpity racket on the way to a hard landing on the ground.

I hear my dog on night patrol, whiffling along, checking out the disturbance. Dogs eat avocados.

My mind always wants to do a body scan, check for dire diseases. It will find them. I try to stomp that activity down before it gains momentum. An unnoticeable daytime twinge can and will, if fed and pampered, erupt into nighttime pain that only morphine will cure. I know. My mind tells me so.

Roll over, pull up the blanket. Just as my mind slows, almost restful, along comes a bobcat with its distinctive skunky reek. The bobcat sniffed around the tree and passed on to other hunting grounds.

Such was my night. I’ve learned to not fight it, to relax into it, whether this peculiar restlessness brings sleep eventually or not.

Want to hear something strange? I could have come up with any number of real things to worry about to keep me awake.

Real stuff, like health of family and friends, lack of money, questioning right or wrong of past decisions, writing script for if this or if that happens.

The possibility of Mt. Tequila erupting despite lack of activity for centuries, a rogue tsunami crossing a range of mountains and drowning all of us. Mass abduction of our community by aliens. You know, real stuff.

No, I stuck with the mundane, traffic noises, bouncing avocados and a roaming bobcat.

On a sleepless night, there is no understanding the quirks and quarks of my mind.

In the morning, I found on the ground, an avocado for the kitchen along with three seeds, licked clean.

On that sleepless night, it seemed, the whole season turned. I went to bed in summer. Didn’t sleep. Got out of bed in the newly turned fall.

The wind was blowing. Not a Montana wind. But wind enough to bend palm leaves and wave the stretched-out branches of the jacaranda. A cooler wind. A wind that chased the daily 99% humidity down to 50%. Oh, blessed wind.

The air smelled like spices, autumn air.

In the sky white puffs scudded along the blue like pleasure boats in a bay. Not a gray rain cloud in sight. Yesterday was summer. Today is autumn. Tonight I will sleep like a rock.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

September 12, 2024

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Wrong Season

 

Wrong Season

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We all get them. This has been our turn. A week fraught with “one thing after another”. The kind of week where the little disasters loom large in shadows of big fears.

My friend Ana in Oconahua had been having stomach pains for a long time, much longer than anybody knew when she finally admitted them and went for tests. Bango—into the hospital she landed, gall bladder surgery. She left minus a body part, with rocks in hand.

She is recovering nicely from the surgery but suffering from the medication. Ana has severe allergies, which is why she was able to ignore the gall bladder pains for so long. She thought the pain her own fault for eating what she shouldn’t eat. Among the long list of allergies, Ana’s body does not tolerate medication but she must use an antibiotic for an intestinal inflammation, no choice. Hence, she is both relieved and miserable, but on the road to recovery.

She lost 20 pounds. I told her, not to worry or go searching. I found them.

Seriously, and actually, Ana is a little bitty woman but once she can eat again, surely her body will adjust.

My daughter, Dee Dee, was hit with acute vertigo. Unlike her mother, she tends to not speak in superlatives, yet she reports that half the town has West Nile and the other half has Norovirus. Her symptoms are along the West Nile variety.

I urged her to get a blood test. She stumbled into the ER, since all the clinics were closed, and stumbled right back out. Standing room only in the waiting area. Had Dee Dee stayed, surely she would have left with a multitude of other ailments.

My daughter is in bed, staying hydrated, pretty much immobilized, hoping to outlast and stabilize her whirling world.

Lesser problems abound. Broken water pumps, leaking roofs, equipment malfunctions, a broken lawn mower, a weed-whacker quit whacking. Every wheel-barrow on the Rancho had flat tires, I kid you not. Frustrations, all.

At my house, Leo broke the handle on my favorite shovel. Not that I’m the one usually using the shovel. This is a short shovel with a good spade. The rod is topped with a cup-shaped plastic handle. The plastic handle broke. Split open like a rotten tomato.

Don’t tell me plastic doesn’t rot. It may not break down into dust but I deal with rotten plastic constantly. I move a bucket of chilis and the lip of the bucket comes away in my hand. Happens regularly.

In frustration, after deciding to have a blacksmith fashion a new metal handle for my shovel, I buried the blade in a pot of bamboo and said to Leo, “There. Maybe it will grow a new handle. Everything else grows.”

Leo seriously contemplated the shovel a good half a minute, shook his head, and said, “No.”

“What do you mean, ‘No’?”

“Wrong season,” Leo replied.

Not to be outdone in the Sympathy Stakes, I am here to announce I have cancer in my left forefinger. You might look at my finger and say, “Looks like a patch of little bumps here on the first joint, oh, and here at the base.”

“Yes,” I say. “Tumors.”

You might reply, “Look like spider bites.”

In return, I might say, “They are driving me nuts. I’m sure they are tumors. They itch, they hurt, I can hardly use that finger. Cancer. What if I have to have my finger amputated?”

You could at least pat me on the shoulder and say, “Poor baby. Here. Put some Bag Balm on it. Cures everything.”

Sondra Ashton

HDN:  Looking out my back door

September rainy week

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In Praise of My Not-so-nice Grandma

 

In Praise of My Not-so-nice Grandma

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Grandma raised me. When I was born, my Dad was overseas fighting in The War. My Mom had what we today call mental health issues.

For all know, from stories told me by that side of the family, she might have been Mad as the Proverbial Hatter. Uncles and Aunts rescued me often and I’m sure they were glad to hand me and Mom over to Dad when he returned.

My Dad was a Farmer. He loved farming. He loved my Mom. Mom loved Dad. Mom did not love farming. I was three when my sister was born. By the time I was four and my little sister, who, by the way, was in braces for feet problems, Dad knew he could not keep us safe. Mom was taken to the State Hospital and was there until de-institutionalization in the70s.

Years later, when Mom was dying, a doctor reviewing her file at the Hospital, told my Aunt and me that a big part of Mom’s problem was post-natal depression and today (early 80s), she would have been treated much differently.

All my Aunts and Uncles had young children. I don’t imagine they were fighting over who got raise us. Rightly so. Dad wanted to keep us with him. As a child, I did entertain fantasies of living with one or another of my numerous relatives.

After having brought up seven of her own, Grandma came to our house to raise me and my sister, Judy. Grandma didn’t like me. In defense of this woman who had a child-free life in Indiana and came to the wind-swept valley in Montana, I understand.

Grandma doted on Judy who  was a neglected baby. Grandma thought I had gotten all the loving.

Not so. Having somewhat raised myself, I might have been a brat. I don’t know. The way Grandma handled it was to lavish Judy with love and to teach me the rudiments of Everything Housekeeping until I was deemed old enough to handle the household on my own. Then Grandma boarded the train back home to Indiana.

That might sound like Judy got the best deal and the young me would have agreed. The older me, long years ago figured that perhaps I got the better deal.

Cooking put me onto this train of thought. Tracy sent me a recipe for a simple Middle-Eastern dish consisting of lentils, rice and caramelized onions. This is not a dish my Grandma would have made. If I could set a plateful in front of her, she would not eat it.

Grandma taught me basic farm-style cooking. Meat, potatoes, vegetables. Pie or cake with dinner because that’s how we ate. Grandma would never have gone out to the herb pots to grab handfuls of aromatic leaves for seasoning. Seasonings came from McNess.

At Grandma’s side I made slaw, pickles, butter and jams. Anything you would find on a farm dinner table, she taught me to make. Canning, preserving, rendering lard, preparing meats and veggies for the freezer, I did it. I did laundry, cleaned house, made soap. I learned to sew, to embroider, to crochet.

Judy, always younger, never lifted a finger. We talked about this years later.

That sounds fierce, but it wasn’t. I found spare time to poke my nose into numerous books, some of them forbidden.

The best thing Grandma did, a side-effect perhaps of her training me up in the way I should go, was teach me to solve problems, to think things out for myself.

For example, consider this dish I’m cooking, which smells delicious, by the way. Tracy’s recipe serves six people. I ignored the recipe, the ingredients are simple, so I pared it down for myself.

I think of my mean Grandma often. I think of her fondly. Near the end of her life, she told me why she treated my neglected sister and me (maybe much loved), differently. She told me she was wrong. I hugged her, very aware of the sacrifices she had made for us.

I’m not so sure she was wrong so much as out of balance in how she raised us. She did a huge thing to give up ten years of her life to raise another family. She gave me gifts I use daily.

I love you, Grandma. By the way, this dish I just cooked is scrumptious.

Caramelize thrice the onions than you think you will need. Use an equal amount of lentils and rice. Pre-cook lentils so the lentils and rice will finish at the same time. I dumped lentils and rice into chicken broth, seasoned with salt, pepper, cumin and garam masala. Stirred in the caramelized onions the last five minutes. I ate mine with a dollop of sour cream. Yogurt would be good. Or a tomato-cucumber salad. Or hard-boiled egg to make pretty. Enjoy.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

End of August, too soon

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Tricycle, Tricycle, Tricycle!

 

Tricycle, Tricycle, Tricycle! 

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I want to ride my tri-cy-cle. I want to ride my trike!

Queen, I shall sing you all day.

Do you remember your first wheels?  Mine was a tricycle, all metal, sparkly red. I remember the size, the shape, the feel of leaning over the chrome handlebars, skinny legs pushing the rubber-clad pedals with all my might, wind in my face, tooling down the lane between the house and the barn.

My friend Janet bought an electric tricycle and she is excited. Her excitement is infectious. I caught a case of trike fever.

I have not had an automobile since moving to Mexico. Public transportation is so good here, even in our small town. Then I got used to depending on my helper, Leo, to take me shopping, to conduct any business, to see a doctor or go for an ice cream. Whatever my needs, it was simple to arrange transportation with Leo and he eased any language problem I might have. That last part is a plus and a minus. Made me language-lazy.

I’ll be moving to a small village, v e r y small. I can still get a taxi or the autobus and I have friends there who will gladly take me out and about. No wheels, no worry.

Inspired by Janet, I did the thing we all do now. I went online and looked at electric trikes for seniors. Ah, the array! The variety! The options!

It didn’t take me any time at all to figure I want one with big fat tires and good suspension to bounce over the cobblestones. And a comfy seat with a back and arm rails. A basket in front for when I lean over the handlebars and pedal on down the street to the closest panaderia for an empanada. Add a basket in back for Lola to ride along, nose sniffing the air, ears on point.

Also, it became immediately apparent I want a more expensive one with add-ons so I will have to save a good while before I get a trike.

There are bike shops in town, many bike shops. I have not checked out what they can do for me.  Or in Ahualulco, which is very much a bicycle town and when you maneuver a vehicle through the narrow streets, you understand why so many people ride bikes.  Or, or, imagine going to the huge bike shops in Guadalajara to feast my eyes on the best of the best. I’m all aflutter with possibility.

Michelle gave me some pointers for what to look for in performance. She’s had three electric bikes and loved them, but her bicycle days are over, she says.

I said, “Picture this. Let’s say we all get a tricycle. Here we go, all in a row, you and Ana and Rick and myself, each on our own trike, wearing leather vests, do-rags around our heads, each with a dog in the back basket. We would be a gang. Everybody would be scared of us.”

Michelle seemed to think we would generate more laughter than fear.

That’s okay too. I’m just dreaming the dream.

I want to ride my tricycle. I want to ride it where I like.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

August 22, 2024

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The Year of the Hibiscus

 

The Year of the Hibiscus

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Here we are, smack in the middle of August, wondering how we got here already. Yes? As a friend said, “What do you mean, August? It’s only June.”

Yes. June. I mean, August! The days move along too quickly on their progression through the equinox. You can feel the difference in the air, can’t you? It might be subtle but it is there. The air has a different scent, a different brush against your skin. A different energy.

Summer is still with us. The signs of the season turning are here. For me, when I see the signs, my mind skips autumn and turns to winter. It is one of my failings. I love autumn and dread winter, even here in this sub-tropical land where mornings can be quite chill.

The three-month-long heat dome messed up a lot of expectations. My Haas avocado tree died. My fig tree was set back, struggling. She’s a baby tree. While standing next to her in the garden, I ate the only fig she gave. Oh, glorious fig.

My mango tree started with an early growth spurt, went into delayed reaction to extreme heat for a month-long hiatus. Now, a month late, two month’s later, I’m finished with harvest. My ever-generous papaya is doing the best she can.

All my garden pots are cleaned up and resting. I won’t plant veggies, tempting as it will be, until after I’m settled in my new home, probably near winter. So I say today.

I mourned my Magnolia. She went into severe decline, leaves burned away. Rains brought revival; the lady is still damaged, not very pretty, but she is giving us her first aromatic flowers. If I were to take you on a garden tour, many plants, bushes, trees would tell you a similar story.

Our daily rains, oh, blessed daily rains, no longer visit with regularity. The rainy season is not gone and done, just slower, lesser, erratic.

Through every change, through every season, the blooming hibiscus, well, blooms.

When I first moved here, eight-and-a-half years ago, I planted hibiscus around the perimeter of my yard. Like the bougainvillea, hibiscus takes seasonal changes in stride and flowers through it all.

I planted all colors. I planted many varieties. I’ve flowers of red, yellow, orange, white, salmon, pink, solid colors and mixed colors. Some are the familiar standard hibiscus you see in every yard. Some are exotic, doubles and ruffles. One has three colors on one bush. One has variegated leaves. One has tiny leaves but big ruffled flowers. 

One, back when it first opened a flower, made me ask my garden helper, Leo, “What flower is this?” “Hibiscus,” he answered. “No.” “Yes, look at it closely. See how it sticks out its tongue.” “Oh. It is a hibiscus.”

This year my hibiscus trees or bushes, are more glorious than ever. Lusher, fuller, more flowery.

If ever I doubt life, all I have to do is look out my windows or walk around my yard. Hibiscus, my ever-blooming hibiscus, assures me that life wants to live. Life wants to live fully, to thrive, to flower in profusion.

Seems to me to be a lot of parallels to our human lives in a garden, maybe especially a garden under duress. Changes are not always welcome, often feared. We may want to hide, to shelter in a cool cave. Metaphorically, we may need to push down deeper roots or prune expectations, but we always have an option to try to grow through the changes. So says my hibiscus.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

August 15, 2024

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