Predictable Patterns

 

Predictable Patterns

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You probably are different. In contemplating my life, I find myself to be much too predictable. Oh, I’m flexible enough. I change plans on a whim, daily. My major patterns, however, can be easily predicted.

Every year, the first week in September, I begin to grumble that the rainy season is over and done. Oh, we may get one more drenching rain, but, predictably, the rains run elsewhere and our dry drags in rolling dust along the way.

This year, the entire month of September was wonderfully wet, rains nearly every night and some days. The first week in October I had to stand on my tongue to keep from grumbling, enough, already. I’ve plans for the dry.

To add to my burden of dissatisfactions, cloudy days drag me down into the mugdumps while sunny days lift my spirits inordinately. October is historically, here in this part of the world, sunny and dry and windy but calm by Montana standards, with cool mornings and warm afternoons. Perfect. Usually. Mid-month and I wonder if November might be dry.

October, despite the never-ending rains, still smells like October, spicy and earthy.

Not all patterns make me grumble. This one took me a while to notice. Every morning Lola and I walk out our gate and down the lane, around the corner and up to the highway, turn about, return. We do this two and sometimes three times a day.

What I didn’t notice, or perhaps misinterpreted, is that if Puffer, Josue’s pup going into doggy adolescence, doesn’t hear my belled gate open, Lola goes into their patio and gets her. At first, I thought Lola was checking out any leftover food (dogs don’t leave leftover food) that she might scarf up.

It took me a while to realize Lola was getting Puffer to share our walkabout. Once Lola rouses Puffer, who doesn’t take much rousing, she pretty much ignores her. Puffer is a pup and Lola is getting to be an old woman. Pup she is, but Puffer is an amazingly gentle and quiet pooch, for a pup. I attribute that to Lola’s teaching.

As predictable as they generally are, these wets and dries can fool us. It happens. Take the rainy wets, for instance. What if, while meandering past on their way elsewhere, Rain becomes enamored by the Trees, waving kisses at the clouds, making winds that grabbed them and corralled them back around to stay awhile. Ah, love, powerful is love.

You do know that is how wind is made, right? The trees wave their branchy arms and winds begin small, grow and mature and whoosh around the world, sometimes creating havoc, sometimes creating romance.

Or perhaps  Dry stops in at a local bar for a quick Coca-Cola, plunks a quarter in the jukebox and someone shoves a Tequila Sunrise in its hand and just like that, without thinking, Dry begins drinking. One drink follows another down the dry throat and next thing you know, fighting breaks out, and our dry hero is incarcerated in the local hoosgow for a period of dry contemplation.

Eventually, time served, our Dry will show up, dry again. Romance of rain and trees will wane. Rain, being of a wandering nature, will flit off elsewhere, in search of another love.

What is also predictable, is that two weeks into our dry season, late as it is, I will be grumbling and wishing for June to hurry to bring back our lovely, life-giving, love-giving rain.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

October 16, 2025

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Dog Gone It

 

            Dog       Gone       It 

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Back in July I took a big step in my single life. I adopted Lola, a sweet dog, raised by friends who had rescued her mother, abandoned, heavy with pups, from homeless life on the streets of Oconahua, sleeping in doorways, eating garbage.  

I like animals. I like pets. Dogs. Cats. Pigs. Rats. Yes, rats. When my daughter was three, I went to buy a guinea pig but the pet store owner talked me into a pair of Chinese Hooded Rats.

Rats make excellent pets, are intelligent, affectionate and are not nocturnal like guinea pigs. I warn against getting an opposite sex pair, however, unless, perhaps you have snakes which need to be fed. Just saying.

Snakes? I draw the line at snakes.

Back to Lola. Lola is a fine dog. An excellent dog. She is a good companion. She is affectionate. Intelligent. Obedient. Has a loads of personality. She is a fine dog.

Best of all, every single day, my dog-pet-companion makes me laugh. Every day.

I know, slowly I am turning into one of those pet owners who bore you with stories of how wonderful their little snookums is.

Lola is not my child. If you every hear me say, “Ooh, sugarpie, come to mommy,” shoot me.

However, every silver lining has a cloud.

About three weeks ago Lola came prancing up to me where I sat reading on the patio and dropped a trowel at my feet. She sat down, tail wagging, waiting for my high praise. I picked up the trowel, looked at it carefully. This trowel was not mine.

Leo was working in my yard. I handed him the trowel. “Oh, yes. This belongs to Janet.” Both our gates were open that afternoon so Lola simply walked next door and helped herself. I know we anthropomorphize pets, but Lola truly did seem proud to bring me a gift.

A few days later, my hairy companion and I were out walking. I wasn’t paying attention as she obediently bounced along behind me, a long-past-its-use-by-date welcome mat tightly clamped in her jaws.

“It’s mine,” Julie said. “I put it out for the garbage truck. Now you can deal with it.” I tossed it into my garbage can.

One afternoon I was next door talking with Crin. Lola was rooting around beneath Crinny’s bougainvillea hedge and found one of those black plastic pots, the kind in which you bring plants home from the nursery. We watched her trot with her prize across the lane and through my gate where she placed her gift by my favorite chair.

Next it was a work boot of Francisco’s. Then a heavy-duty rubber glove that belonged to John. See a pattern developing here, folks?

Yesterday, Leo asked me, “Have you seen my scissors?” Scissors is his word for secateurs or garden clippers. We both looked down at Lola. She wagged and smiled. We still haven’t found them. Maybe they accidently got tossed out with the trash.

Today it was a large knife Leo uses in his garden work, last seen on the yellow chair, used when he re-potted that feathery-ferny plant. All I can say is, “There is no evidence of blood.”

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. My neighbors raise chickens. They aren’t home this week. I’m thinking of taking Lola for a moonlight stroll. If I sit on their patio a while, Lola might drop a fat hen at my feet. Roast chicken for Thanksgiving dinner?                                             

I suppose my goat bell on the gate will ring daily. “I’ve lost my pliers.” “Can’t find my glasses.” “Wonder if you’ve seen a stray white tennis shoe?” Good thing my neighbors like Lola.

“Lolita, sweetums, come to mama. What did you bring me today, my sweet poochy-woochy.”

Dog gone it.

Happy Thanksgiving.

 

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

November 24, 2021

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The New Economy

Re-run: Jan 2009


The New Economy
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The dog showed up on my doorstep, shivering and whimpering, lost and hungry, minus collar, tags, or known history. Yes, I know. I know. Wisdom says, if you feed him, he will never leave. But what would you do?

The leaves had fled the poplar trees in my yard. The rime of frost was thicker each morning. Day light was migrating south. The mercury plummeted. Snow flakes gathered, reading for the long-dark-night-of-the-soul Montana winter.

I am a cat person. I do not want a dog.

The dog wagged his tail, sat on my foot and leaned into my leg. He said, “I am here to work on your relationship skills.”

Fool that I am, I opened the door and he walked in. I laid down the rules: You will not lounge on the couch. You will not track mud over the floors. You will not put your paws on me. You will bathe frequently.

But true to form, the only one making any lifestyle changes is me. I learn new habits. I make space for him. I buy and prepare special foods. I provide treats, toys and a new bed. I use a term of endearment when I call him for dinner. I change my routine. I check with him before I make plans for the weekend. I say to myself, “This is really sick.”
One day, while sitting at my desk paying bills, I say, “Dog, it is time you start to carry your own weight around here. There will be no slackers in this family,” I say this sternly. “Everyone contributes, each according to his means.”

The next day, Dog, after an expedition roaming the neighborhood, drags home the thigh bone of a tyrannosaurus rex. I heave a sigh. I imagine mountains of debris that I will have to pick up when the yard next appears, probably in May. I know Dog isn’t going to clean it up. I watch as he buries the bone in a mid-size drift, then sits, tail gouging angel wings in the snow, altogether pleased with himself.

Then I have an ‘ah-ha’ moment. That is when our relationship began to turn around. I wait until dark. I don’t want the neighbors to see me. A sliver of moon guides me to the spot marked in my memory. I pry t-rex from its frozen grave and drag it into the house. I fill the stock pot with water and boil the bone with the butt of a celery stalk, a couple onions, a few cloves of garlic, some carrot tops and assorted dried herbs from my garden. I simmer the bone about thirty hours, strain the whole mess and put up six quarts of prime soup stock. I toss the boiled bone back into the yard.

Several days later I serve dinner to friends. They rave about the soup. I smile sweetly and say, “The secret’s in the stock.”

Every few days, Dog drags home a new animal part. I note where he hides it, and under cover of night, slip outside and dig it up, throw it in the stock pot and simmer a new batch. I pat Dog on the head. Best relationship I ever had.

Sondra Ashton

Havre Daily News

January 26, 2009
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All in the Family

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I waved as my daughter and her family backed out of my driveway on their way back home to Marysville, Washington. The whole family, Dee Dee and her husband Chris, their daughters, Jess and Toni, dogs Cutie and Daisy, spent the last several days at my home. Well, almost the whole family—everybody but Burli. Burli, the one hundred fifty-five pound English mastiff with the self-esteem of a lap dog. Burli, who could pin me into my chair and make me laugh. Burli, with her massive face, beautiful with all its folds and wrinkles. Burli, with her drool.

Burli had been put down. She had been in continuous pain. In her last month she had lost twenty pounds. The vet figured that on top of her long list of ailments, she probably had a cancer. It had been a sad day. Everybody cried. Burli was family. Many times during their visit, our conversations turned to memories of Burli.

As a farm girl, I had ample opportunity to become fond of an animal only to discover it had disappeared from the barnyard and through a circuitous route, ended on the table. Because of this, I never had a chicken as a pet. I had much too active a role in the process of their transition from fluffy yellow chick to pullet to Sunday dinner.

However, my first experience with losing a pet was my own pig, Jasper. I killed him. I was eight years old. It was a rainy day in early spring. We lived on a small farm in southern Indiana with several acres of woods. Mayapples, with leaves the size and shape of small umbrellas, grew there in profusion. I asked my dad if I could gather mayapple leaves to feed my pet pig. The mayapple is also called the hogapple. Their little fruit ripens in early fall and the hogs seem to find them a delicacy. My dad said yes. I made trip after trip into the woods, gathering armloads of mayapple leaves and tossing them over the fence into the pigpen where Jasper lived with seven other handsome Yorkshire weaner pigs.

I loved Jasper. I would hang over the fence for hours scratching Jasper’s pink back and talking to him, unloading my eight-year-old troubles. Jasper wriggled in appreciation, grunted, sighed, and burped. Once I had heaved a small mountain of leaves into the pigpen, I headed to the house to peel potatoes for supper, leaving Jasper and the other seven porkers noisily rooting through the tender green delicacy.

The following morning my dad woke me early and motioned me to get dressed. I followed him to the barnyard. There lay my own Jasper, bloated, belly up, legs in the air. Around the other side of the leaf pile, the other seven pigs sprawled in the same position. All dead. I had killed them.

I cried and cried. My Dad stood with his hand on my shoulder. He never said a punishing word to me. After all, I had asked and he had given me permission to feed the mayapple leaves to the pigs. He had not known the leaf of the mayapple was poisonous.

I have had pets much of my life. Pinky, my first cat. Flopsie, my first dog. Pete and Repete, my daughter’s Chinese hooded rats. Houdini, my son’s gerbil,which I nearly killed one night when he escaped his cage and snuggled under my chin to sleep in my warmth. Horses, more cats, more dogs, and even more rats. Some died. Some disappeared. Twice I held dogs in my arms while the vet put them down. Whether we intend it or not, our pets become family.

My own two cats, Penguina and Fat Louie, did not welcome our visitors, especially five-year old Toni and the dogs, with the same enthusiasm I did. Penguina holed up beneath my garden cabin and only emerged in the dead of night to come to the house for a bite to eat. Fat Louie eventually tolerated the children and the dogs. Now my kids, grandkids and their pets are gone. The house is awfully quiet. Penguina is peacefully asleep beneath the cutting table in my shop. Fat Louie is curled in my garden basket, under the bench out my back door.

Sondra Ashton
HDN: Looking out my back door
September 1, 2011
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The New Economy

I wrote this this last night and this morning.
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The New Economy

The dog showed up on my doorstep, whimpering and shivering, minus collar, tags, or known history. Yes, I know, I know. Wisdom says, don’t feed him; he will never leave. But what would you do? The leaves had fled the poplar trees in my yard, the rime of frost was thicker each morning, daylight was migrating south. The mercury plummeted, and snow flakes gathered, readying for the long-dark-night-of-the-soul winter.

I am a cat person. I do not want a dog. He wagged his tail. He said, “I’m here to work on your relationship skills.” Those are the first and the last words he spoke to me—which is par for my relationships.

Fool that I am, I lay down the rules: You will not lounge on the couch. You will not track mud over the floors. You will not put your paws on me. You will bathe frequently.

But, true to form, before I realize that I am the one changing, I learn new habits. I make space for him. I buy and prepare special foods, treats, toys, a new bed. I use a term of endearment when I call him for dinner. I change my routine. I check with him before I make plans for the weekend. I think, “This is really sick.”

One day, while sitting at my desk, paying bills, I say, “Dog, you gotta carry your own weight around here. There are no sluffers in this family. Everyone contributes, each according to his means.” I say this sternly. He, of course, does not answer.

The next day, after an expedition roaming the neighborhood, Dog drags home the thigh bone of a tyrannosaurus rex. I heave a sigh, imagining mountains of debris I will have to clean up when the yard next appears, probably in May. I know Dog isn’t going to pick it up. I watch as he buries the bone in a mid-size drift, then sits, tail gouging angel wings in the snow, altogether pleased with himself.

I have an ‘ah-ha’ moment. This is when our relationship begins to turn around.

I don’t want the neighbors to see me. I wait until dark. A sliver of moon guides me to the spot marked in my memory. I pry t-rex from its frozen grave, and drag it into the house. I fill the stock pot with water and boil that bone with the butt of a celery stalk, a couple onions, a few cloves of garlic, some carrot tops, assorted herbs dried from my garden. I boil that bone about 30 hours, strain the whole mess and can 6 quarts of prime soup stock. I toss the cooked and softened bones back into the yard.

A couple days later I serve dinner to friends. They rave about the soup. I smile sweetly and say, “It’s all in the stock.”

Every few days, that dog drags home a new animal part. I note where he hides it, and under cover of night, slip outside and dig it up, throw it in the stock pot and simmer a new batch, pat dog on his head. Best relationship I ever had.
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