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 20th
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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