When the pot gets stirred

 

When the pot gets stirred

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I’m not going into a lot of detail. There was a death, not unexpected, in the family who own this rancho. It’s a big family, a lot of history here. For the past few days, it’s felt like, humor me here, spirits wandering, a lot of back and forth, disconnected and disconcerted. I’m talking about a lot of restless spirits.

I’m sensitive to these things, to an extent. Aware, that’s all.

This morning I woke up angry, for no discernable reason and with no object for my anger. This after a couple nights of really strange, even for me, strange dreams, in one of which I chased a charging bear, which, let me assure you, is not my nature.  

My daughter, who is quite sensitive to these things, cut to the chase with few words. “It’s the death. Smudge.”

If you are a strict traditionalist, an adherent to the way it’s been done for centuries, I respect your stance. I’m more of an evolutionist, move-with-time-and-inclination-and-situation kind of person.

I quickly got a good cloud of sage smoke going and swam around in it to the tune of “We will, we will, rock you!”

After smoking myself, oops, that doesn’t sound right. I don’t mean I smoked the sage, yuk. I mean I covered myself in smoke.  I drenched my casa, nooks, crannies and all, stepped outside and wafted smoke throughout my yard, around all the boundaries and betweenies. I finished to the tune of the old timey church song, “Love lifted me”.

I felt scrubbed, inside and outside. Lighter. Drifty. Good.

At the end of the day, despite every window wide open, my house still smiled of burnt sage. Me, too.

Good news.  No more bears to chase off in the night.

No bears, but I found two cicadas under the bed during my morning mopping. These critters are big. And crunchy. They could not have slid through the crack under the door. How did they get in the house?

Two of them.  Under the bed. You know what that means. Next spring an entire flock will come creeping out from the wooden slats. Always something.

Yes, something. There I sat in my puddle of sweat, minding my own business, when a lizard skittered across the floor in front of me, paused, looked at me, shrugged, I swear, shrugged, oh, just you, and continued to the wall and behind a bookcase.

What? Do I run an animal refuge house? I don’t mind lizards. I’ve said that before. Lizards eat mosquitoes and such. This one might have had a run-in with Lola. Part of its tail is missing. I really don’t mind lizards. But. But. What about at night? Would you want a lizard skittering across your face in the night?

A few days and the mostly invisible world around me should be calm again. In as much as it can be.

We are still under the heat dome. The news tells us it moved north. I think it just got larger, spread out. I like the heat, but in smaller batches. A few days at a time, hey, I’m okay. But not month (April) after month (May) after month (Deep into June) with no relief.

I’d move to Iceland, for its name if nothing else. I’ve been pricing walk-in coolers.

I know some things thrive in this heat. Iguanas. Mangos. I wish you could see my Plumbago bushes, explosions of periwinkle blue. As I said, some like it hot!

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my backdoor

Still sweltering in June

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Like Falling in First Love

 

Like Falling in First Love

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Out of nowhere, no foretaste, foretelling, forewarning, it dropped from the sky, swooning, gobsmacked us in the best way. Rain, glorious, wondrous, wet, rain. Before the sun settled, the rain swung low like a sweet chariot, and dropped love from the sky.

The trees, the grasses, the flowers, the chili peppers, the weeds, me; we all lifted our arms in glad welcome. Lola The Dog scurried into her wee casita and hovered against the back wall.

Lola is not a water dog. She cools herself by digging down into the dirt shaded by a lime tree or the giant philodendron leaves, with her feet makes the dirt fly up into her fur, much in the same manner as a chicken. Makes me wonder, who was this child’s mother?

The rest of us, all our little world, gloried in the welcome first rain. One hour, one solid hour of solid straight-down good hard rain. When the sun set, the huge fireball of scarlet-red sun, it seemed to sail beyond the horizon like a ship upon the sea.

All night the air smelled like wet dirt instead of our usual smoky dust alternating with dusty smoke. This morning the air is soft, gentle with flowery scents.

Now I ask you, doesn’t that just sound like somebody who has lost her mind in the infatuation of first love, first rain?

In the same way that the wild crocus popping through the melting snow doesn’t mean winter is over, this first rain doesn’t mean our hot season is done. One rain does not a drought transform. But it is a start, a welcome start. I’ll dub it our crocus rain.

The biggest difference to me is a shift in my attitude. Suddenly the world is fresher. I have regained lost energy. Before the rain, despair. After the rain, hope. That is big.

I left my casa with gusto this morning for Leo to take me shopping. I didn’t need much. I had made arrangements with Leo on Saturday to take me for a haircut. Like a weather change, I made a decision to buy bacon instead of get a haircut. Inflation hits us all. My stomach won this round over my head.

At the fruteria, I bought strawberries, among other things. I had three choices of how to buy my berries. I could get a hard-shelled pack of berries just like in US stores. K aching! I could pick handfuls from an open crate. Ching, ching. Or I could buy a large container of culls for a mere few pesos.

I bought the leavings. I end with the same amount of discards and the berries are sweeter, smell like strawberries. Last week, my container, a good mounded quart, cost 10 pesos. This week the same container was 30 pesos. The young man filling the container, which I have him pour into a bag, topped it high and threw in a half-dozen extra handfuls of berries. Inflation which came with kindness.

At the checkout, Pepe, the owner rattled on to Leo in rapid Spanish for five minutes. As we turned to go, Leo told me, “He said, the prices go higher each week.”

At the cremeria, where I bought a half kilo of bacon, my treat for not cutting my shaggy hair, the price of crema media had gone up 5 pesos. Crèma media is a heavy cream, a treat with strawberries, not a necessity.

On the way out of town to the rancho, I asked Leo to stop at the hat stand along the highway. I wanted a new straw hat. This man sets up daily with a wide array of hats, mostly hats for field workers. That’s what I wanted, a hat with a wide brim which hung downward to shield my eyes.

I have a small head so the man had to dig to find a hat that didn’t rock and roll around my head and slide down over my eyes. Finally, the perfect hat. Paid 270 pesos, for a hat to sit happy on my shaggy head.

As we left the hats, back onto the highway home, “Remember when this hat cost 25 pesos?” “Yep, seven, eight and nine years ago. Inflation!”

With the heat dome slightly tilted, not lifted, we are not yet into rainy days. The forecast ahead shows afternoons in the higher 90s, nothing triple digit; small relief and I’ll take it. The rains will come. My new hat will keep off rain as well as sun, the hat man assured me. Meanwhile, I have strawberries and cream. It’s a pretty fine world when one is in love.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

Sweltering in June

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I’ve nothing to say.

 

I’ve nothing to say.

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Truly. I’ve nothing to say. My mind is fried, blackened to a carbon crisp beneath the unrelenting heat dome. The way it is today is the way it will be forever and ever, amen. I know that is a big, fat lie, but it is the way I feel. Discouraged.

Every morning I scurry to get basic cleaning done before 9:00 because three-digit heat comes with companionable dust. I knock back the most visible dirt and mop the floors because that layer of dust is slick and slick is dangerous to old feet. There is no sense doing a big clean because at the day’s end, dust is back thick and thicker, thanks to a huge construction project up wind.

I hope you never experience a heat dome, like being under a lid on a boiling pot, but even with a normal high summer, please be careful of yourself and with those around you, making sure your family, friends and neighbors stay hydrated, stay safe.

As careful as I am, I’ve had several bouts of sickness from the heat. I suspect that once you’ve been fried, you are more vulnerable. The worst part of it for me is feeling completely drained of energy, to a point my mind quits working, similar to a minor depression. I take another shower. I may be sweaty but I am clean sweaty. 

 In support of another hot topic, “Women of the world, unite!” We will have a new presidenta in Mexico. She gives us hope. When I first typed the word “unite”, I typed “untie”. Perhaps it was not a mistake, but a happy accident. We live in hope that women of the world get a chance to untie many of the knots of the past. That, my Dear, is as political as I am willing to get. In public.

I’m more than willing to be silly. Four of us women are visualizing lifting the heat dome. We are. Visualizing. Up, up and away.

My house has become a haven for lizards. Why? Lizards thrive in hot sun. Don’t they? It is only marginally cooler in my house than outside on the rocks. The creatures must crawl in beneath the gap at the bottom of the screen door. I did not invite them. I do not encourage them. I made attempts to catch and release. Don’t laugh. Lizards 3, me 0. I give up.

Why do lizards want to be inside? I can’t imagine. Maybe in search of water? Lizards eat bugs. Maybe if they stay, they will rid my house of spiders, ants, flies and mosquitoes, the occasional earwig or roly-poly bug. I hope I have enough house bugs to keep the lizards fed. Don’t ask me where that thought originated.

You may think my house a bug haven. It is not. Which is why I worry about the lizards. I hate to think of a lizard gasping its last in starvation agony behind my book case. On the other hand, they found a way in. There are an equal number of ways out.

Every day I check the long range weather forecast. Every day I see the same page. I suspect the weather people are on vacation in Antarctica and have set their computers to “rerun”.

I look for disturbances out in the oceans, anything which might mean change is coming our way, some day, soon. Nary a cloud in any sky. The NOAA people have put hurricanes on hold, not that I want a hurricane, but, guilty confession, hurricanes do bring cooling rains.

Trying anything to keep up my spirits, I focus on the birds. The Bird of the Day, my call, is the “Let-it-go” Bird. This is a year-round bird, here every day. Its song is just that, “Let-it-go, Let-it-go, Let-it-go”. Good advice any day.

“I’m trying to let it go, bird, I’m trying.”

There goes that pesky fly again. Where is my lizard when I need one?

I’m sorry. I really have nothing to say.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

June has arrived

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