The gift of strawberries

Lifestyle fitness camp 3

                This is not about Jenn and Chad and their great program.  This is about what happens after I return to ‘normal’ life.

                The big question is, of course, can I maintain my progress.  I guess we won’t know that yet.  We’ll check back later, maybe in a year.

                Meanwhile, sticking to the basic plan of consuming less than 1,000 calories a day and aiming at 100 grams of protein, so far so good.  I am continuing to lose.  Of course, consumption isn’t the only consideration.  Activity level is also the other factor.

                I have not gone to the gym in a few weeks.  I seldom do floor exercises.  I am not using the tube bands.  I hope that once I get settled in my new home, these will become my daily routine (except for the gym).  I paid the gym for three months, more out of a sense of supporting the community than of anticipation of actual usage.  For what I paid, calculating 15 pesos each visit, this should actually have given me a year’s pass!  But the more important consideration is to keep the gym alive.  It isn’t much, but it is all we’ve got.

                These are the activities that have been exhausting me.  I painted my bedroom, with Juan’s help.  I have been trying to coax a small garden.  I’ve been hauling rocks, to build an indigenous septic system. The electricity to all of Pozole has been out for over two weeks now.  The utility company says that they need to replace a transformer.  What?  So order one, send it overnight, and fix it.  Why the delay? 

My neighbors have not had lights at night, the dairy cannot refrigerate its daily milk, and of course, refrigerated and frozen food is now spoiled.  For me, the only serious effect is lack of water.  I bought a generator.  Juan hooked it up to the well’s pump and filled a spare tank that he placed near the house door.  This used up almost a full tank of generator gas, maybe ten liters.  To water my garden I fill bottles and pitchers of water, and carry them all around the property.

I am learning that the soil is deplete, and just loosening it, planting seed and watering isn’t going to cut it.  So I have ordered worms online; I have not received an ETA.  They must first be harvested, I guess, presuming the Mexican company is still in business.

                An acquaintance, Jim, one day told me that he had about 200 strawberries plants that he could give me.  This is an exciting prospect, once the house is settled and I can focus on gardening.

                Then one day he called me and said, ‘Come pick up some strawberry plants.’

                I took the bike the few blocks to his house and packed one load.  As it turned out, this same day I had connected with both Luis (the architect) and the carpenter.  We had already arranged to carry the carpenter out to my house to assay the perspective job, Luis would check in on his job out there, and come back and pick us up.  God is good.  I took the first batch of strawberry plants to the carpenter’s door, but it was closed.  He was changing clothes.  I feared they would be stolen.  I took the next batch directly to Luis’s uncle’s hardware store, which is around the corner from my apartment maybe 100 feet away.  Within the hour we were ready, the plants were loaded on the truck, and out we went the 9 kilometers to my house.

                Jim has proven to be on the negative column of Canatlan’s assets.  As I have come to know him better, I find him to be a racist, a bitter and spiteful old man.  This seems in keeping with the attributes of our birth year, as I learned during my time in India as Jane’s neighbor.  She and Jim are days apart in age.  1941 is the year of iron snake.  This apparently produces rigid inflexible people.  According to the Chinese lunar calendar I am part of that year, but I do not lay claim to these attributes.  It would seem a gracious and generous act, offering me these strawberries.  But the manner in which the gift is conveyed proves to be negative, without advance warning to give me time to prepare the soil.  I brought them out to the house on Thursday, placed them in the shade of a small tree near the entrance to the property, and threw some water on them.  On Friday I was out there again, and threw more water on them.  They seemed okay.  I missed Saturday.  Sunday was Palm Sunday, and I had been looking forward to joining the Church procession of the Palms.  I missed out on that, however.  By 8 a.m. I was already out on the ‘ranchito’ trying desperately to create a hospitable environment for these plants, despite my lack of resources.  No peat moss, no fertilizer, only spent earth and water.

                I had read up the night before, by using the tethering feature on my phone.  As it transpired, that used up nearly a gig of my 5 G quota, weeks before my service period was over; a couple days later I got the advance warning that I had less than a gig left.  This limits my access to news media; no more lounging in bed in the early morning catching up with the world news.

                I learned that a raised bed is a good idea.  The plants need loose soil, with good aeration and drainage.  I spent the morning on a piece of land 3 meters by 3 meters.  I was aiming to leave 12 to 18 inches between plants.  I did a rough estimate that I had nine plants.  Wrong.

                I flattened the previously plowed furrows, and tried to loosen the packed earth underneath with a spade fork.  There are still mounds of dirt around the property, after the backhoe opened up foundation lines for the fence and garage.  I shoveled until I couldn’t shovel anymore, from the mound adjoining the little plot, trying to produce a raised bed.  I divided it into three rows, with a narrow path in between.  I sought out places where the two grazing horses had left their deposits, took the oldest dried out patches I could find, and worked the loosened chaff into an equal amount of soil.  Then I laid it on top of my raised bed.  In the end, I squeezed 14 plants into that small area.  Some might not make it anyway, because they were too dried out.  For now, that is it for strawberries.  There are far too many other pressing jobs to be done on the land and house, before I can even live there. 

                The arugula was one of two seeds that germinated, of the over six kinds of plants sown.  The snow peas are hardy, although they seemed stunted.  The arugula awaited me in the seeding bed, ready for transplant.  I had far more seedlings than I could use.  I spaded over a raised row that had not borne seedlings, loosened it up and flattened the row.  Rows were a stupid idea; each time I added water they eroded, stranding the seedlings.  With this new flat bed I was able to transplant about twelve seedlings.  The poor soil would only produce more stunted plants.  I needed something.

                I remember using, in the past, manure tea.  This involves soaking manure and using the water as liquid fertilizer.  I didn’t know if horse manure would be as valuable as cow manure, but it is what was available.  I collected a bucket full.  I filled the bucket with water, and let it soak while I did other tasks.  Finally, I poured some off into a pitcher and diluted it by half.  I then used that on all my plant beds. 

                It is not very scientific; I have no idea what nutrients I am adding.  It is simply a matter of doing something is better than doing nothing.  I wish for an agricultural extension office, where I could bring my soil for testing and learn what I needed to add to make it usable.  This puts me in mind of when I started the bakery in China.  I had a list of materials and equipment I needed, but had no idea where to buy them.  I assumed they were not available in China.  Then as I learned to use the internet and the shopping portal TaoBao I eventually learned that I could find anything.  I am going through that process all over again.  In this agricultural area there must be a service like that; my task is to find it.

                To recap, I began this project of improving my health around January 19.  My goal going into the fitness program was to lose 20 pounds.  I left three weeks later having lost about 9 pounds.  My target was unrealistic.  Better than rapid weight loss, I had gained tools to maintain weight loss until I reached my goal.  Helping Juan haul rocks into the pickup truck for two hours proved that I had certainly reached a level of fitness greatly improved over when I began the program.  On March 27 the scale read 137 pounds, that is, 2 pounds away from my ultimate goal.

weather in Durango, Mexico

Weather

Ask people what are their priorities when choosing a retirement location, and I imagine weather to be in the top three or four of that list.  I know for me it plays an important role.  I have lucked out in finding Durango.

As I have said elsewhere, I decided to buy into this Buddhist community about six years ago sight unseen, while I was living in China.  I know I do well in community, and this one offered still unknown participants who would be sharing a similar philosophy and lifestyle.  So many years later, and the community has not yet flourished.  There are still no permanent residents.  Only one house is livable, and that Canadian gentleman spends two weeks twice a year here on his vacation.  When he does retire he plans to spend only six months here in order to preserve his Canadian retirement benefits. Now that I live in this location, it feels like for a whole lot of other reasons it is never going to take seed.  I arrived a year ago already vested, and so I stick around to see what I can make of my investment.

I have not yet lived here the full year around.  I have come in winter, summer, and late fall.  Now I am experiencing the full winter season, and spring is just around the corner. 

One thing I have said often is that I love the blue skies.  At 6,000 feet altitude the sky is a dark shade of blue.  It is not the washed out blue that I usually saw in Jiangsu, China.  For a while, I swore there were never any clouds.  I have learned better now, but I am no less enthralled.

Six years ago when I first heard about this place I did look up information about the weather.  It seemed that the daytime temperature ranged between 70 and 90 degrees Fahrenheit all year round.   I had been advised that in winter strong winds blow.  I have not found this true, except for March.  In this month a brief gust can rock you.  In the afternoon the wind picks up, pressing city dust into crevices around the doors and windows.

The winter nights could be cold, dipping down to freezing.  I thought I had better equip my proposed house with a wood burning stove.

Now that I have slept through many a winter night, with passive solar water heater on the roof, I realize that the cold is fleeting, it leaves as soon as the sun rises above the mountain tops.  The nights are very long.  It is dark by 7:30 p.m., and the starry skies remain visible for twelve hours more.  Although it can get cold at night, I do not see the earth freezing.  A frosty night can bite the leaves and red flowers off a healthy Poinsettia bush, but the roots remain unscathed.

A southerly facing bedroom window will allow the room to get cozy warm before bedtime.  If I turn on a heater, it is only to pamper myself.  Once inside the blankets I sleep warmly all night. A bathrobe is enough for the nightly bathroom run. 

This is a far cry from winters I have spent in East Tibet at 12,000 feet.

So, is it true that there are never any clouds in the sky?  This year around September the rainy season began.  The days were partly cloudy, but the rains usually held off until nightfall.  The high plateau land here is similar to dessert in that the rainy season results in flash floods. 

In the tiny village of El Pozole where my house is, I was pretty much housebound for a month.  The dirt roads out here in the countryside tend to get muddy.  Ruts can be filled with a foot of water, over a slippery muddy base. A creek passes across the road, and for most of the year can be forded by car or by stepping stones.  But in rainy season it overflows its banks to become deep and 30 feet wide with swift current.  The one flat bridge into town was inundated this year, by about one foot of swift-running water that lasted most of the month.  That pretty much shuts down transportation for all but tall 4x4 pickup trucks. 

The heavy equipment still moves, the bulldozers and backhoes, which gouge deep ruts into the soft roads.  The locals take it in stride, being prepared with good vehicles and Wellingtons.  I was stuck, with a low-carriage ‘city’ car.

I was surprised by a day or two of rain in January, and again in February.  The locals murmured that the weather is changing.  There are the occasional clouds even when the rain does not fall, but it is a rare day when the sun does not burn down.  This afternoon I took a walk in the countryside, and when I got home to shower discovered a line of tan on my legs above my socks.  Yet as the sun goes down and night approaches, the sky is gray with big patches of clouds.

By March the nippy nights are long gone (unless you are riding on a motorbike at dawn, when you still feel the cold with three layers on, wishing for gloves), the day time temperatures rise to between 75 and 80 degrees.  Farmers are gardeners have already planted seeds, and the fields are green with beans or wheat. 

In summer, as I have written elsewhere, a house needs to be properly constructed to accommodate the weather.  I stayed in a home that had inadequate insulation and ventilation, and suffered some very hot nights.  Yet I would sit in the yard at dusk and feel the cool breeze blowing, and the mosquitoes biting.  Not many, but it only takes two to drive you mad.  Out with the Off!  A house designed with adequate ventilation would admit the evening breeze and dispel the heat.

As I continue to construct my house, I am making sure there are layers of concrete inside the brick structure to serve as insulation.  The large picture window in the master bedroom is south facing, and screened windows face the east and west to accommodate the evening summer breezes.  This is how I designed the house six years ago. 

The summer sun can be hot.  It is wise to walk with a wide-brimmed hat and or an umbrella.  But the heat is a dry heat and the breezes still flow across the plateau.  It is not a heat the presses you down to the earth and makes you melt.

I find this one fact about Mexico to be a bit odd.  From what I understand, the little city of Canatlan is not unusual in not having storm drains.  The large city of Durango does also not have storm drains.  When it rains the streets flood.  This explains the very high sidewalks in Canatlan.  In the newer developments in Durango I also noticed that the houses were built at a slight elevation, with down-sloping paved yards.

If freezing cold winters and muggy summers are not your cup of tea, you may well find the weather in Durango on the asset column as you evaluate your potential retirement location.

Easter 2018

Easter, Strawberries and power failure

                It feels like all my projects have gotten bogged down.  I have extended the town apartment rental by two weeks.  I go daily to the countryside to see what I can do to further a project, any project, along.  I wind up spending my time in the garden.

                The hamlet of El Pozole was hit with a transformer failure, which effectively shut down all electric power to the community.  It was restored to the rest of the community, except for a narrow band of us along the Paso de las Carretas road.  Almost a month has gone by; the utility company says it cannot find a replacement transformer.  This is scandalous.  It is hard to imagine.  The American mind says, write your congressman.  Write to the head of the utility company, to the head of the overseeing government body.  This is Mexico, however.  We funnel our complaints to the local utility office.  Even the folks living in Canatlan do not know of our situation.  We shut make signs and march in front of the local office!  Make noise, get attention, cause some embarrassment.  This is Mexico, however.  We impotently suffer in silence.

                Without power, I cannot run a hose to water my plants.  Juan had foresight, I don’t know how he figured it out.  In the first week of the power outage we had two days of power.  He grabbed an empty water tank, of the sort we put on the roof, and placed it next to the hose.  He then filled it with water, on the day there was power.  Or perhaps he just drained the already full tank on the roof, into the one on the ground.  After a while I bought a generator, and he used that to run the well pump one more time to fill the tank again.  From that water I have been able to fill buckets and carry water to the plants.  This is time consuming and exhausting, but the plants struggle on.  Now the tank is almost empty, the buckets do not fill because I cannot reach the water level, and I have let Juan go.  He has finished the brick work, I cannot justify keeping him on the payroll.  But how will I get the water tank filled again?  I must buy a very long extension cord to hook the generator up to the well pump.  I think Juan simply put the generator into a wheelbarrow and carried it over there.  I cannot do that.

                On Maundy Thursday I met Juan, paid him what I owed, and let him know I didn’t have any more work for him now.  I had gathered his tools in one spot, where he could collect them.

                When I went out to the house, I found that he not only had removed all his tools, but also the tools that belonged to Luz de Compasion.  He had put them in the locked shed.  I had lost my keys to that shed a week earlier.  Now the wheelbarrow, the shovel, and the electric extension cord were locked away beyond my reach.  How annoying!  I had been using the wheelbarrow to carry water to the strawberry patch.  I needed it to carry the generator closer to the pump.  Even the shovel; without water, there were still things I could do around the property.  Since I suspect him of having the keys I lost, I find this to be an unkind act.  Of course, I could be wrong in my suspicion.  He was there when I lost the keys.  He was giving me a lift to my bike which had run out of gas.  I used the key ring when I unlocked and relocked the main gate as we left.  This key ring reminded him of the other I had left behind at Doug’s house; he asked me if I had retrieved them from under the mat. 

                I have not seen the gate key since that day.  It was attached to a calf hide change purse I had bought in Italy a year ago.  I was sorry to lose it.  I had also just folded a 500 peso note into it that morning.  Juan usually does not lie directly.  His is more often the lie of omission.  So when I asked him point blank if he picked up the keys, his ‘no’ should leave no room for doubt. 

                A flash of déjà vu. My black purse which I last saw under the table at Esther and Iloy’s house, that which contained my passport and Verizon phone, has never been seen again.  They swore I did not leave it behind.  What other conclusion can I draw, but that I have a poltergeist playing games with me.

                Easter weekend arrived.  I love the rituals surrounding this holy time.  I have a collection of lovely memories of rekindling the light into the church upon Christ’s resurrection.  I flash back to the old city of Jerusalem, sitting one story up on a Muslim call-to-prayer tower, watching the drama unfold in the courtyard of an old church.  In the high-plateau town of Westcliff, Colorado, a Filipino priest at the lovely church there rekindled the flame on the doorstep of the church.  In Kangding, the church is on the second story; the fire was lit on the balcony as we all crowded around.  Back further, I see myself sitting in a darkened church in Hendersonville, North Carolina, as the light is carried into the church as the words of scripture are acted out at the altar, and one by one from the back of the church the flame is passed candle to candle until the church is ablaze. But this year, thanks to the cantankerous Jim, I missed the heraldry. 

                Jim gave me a bunch of strawberry plants.  How nice!  However, I had no place prepared for strawberries.  I read up online, and discovered I needed to create a raised bed of porous material with good drainage and topped with mulch.  I needed to run down to Home Depot and pick up some peat moss and 9-9-9 fertilizer.  Oh, wait.  There is no Home Depot in Canatlan.

                I left the plants under a small shade tree for the few days while I tried to free up time to create this special bed.  I spent hours shoveling dirt from one of the many mounds left by the backhoe onto a 9 meter square plot of land.  My yard is still piled high with these mounds of dirt, leaving no room for such a bed.  I have had to use common land at the far side of where my garage will go.  I did what I could to add porous material, by gathering up dried horse dung and rubbing the clods between my hands to release the fine straw.  I worked it as best I could to the soil, but I was concerned about too much nitrogen being introduced.  I am not a chemist, I do not know what other chemicals and minerals dried horse manure contains.  I am only focusing on texture.

                I had done a rough count and figured I had 9 plants.  But as I soaked them in water to loosen the roots, I discovered I had 14 plants.  Some were healthier than others.  I did my best to put them in the soil, then spent considerable time carrying water out to them.  This used up the last of the storage tank.

                One day I went to my neighbor, Armando.  He had borrowed my generator the other day to water his bed of beans, planted in his home garden and thus not serviced by the waterline from the dam.  That water is meant for the orchards and planted fields, not for our home gardens.  He kept it overnight and returned it the next day. 

                I asked him if he might help me bring the generator to the pump’s electric connection, which is 50 yards away from my house.  By this time I had borrowed the crucial key from Juan to open that storage shed, where the wheelbarrow, shovel and electric extension cord are stored. 

                Armando is a great guy.  His body is sun-browned as a berry and lean.  His gray hair is shaved close to his head.  He is an easy-going guy.  His house is just down the road from mine, on the other side of the road closer to the creek.  He comes readily, without hesitation.

                He puts the generator into the wheelbarrow and wheels it down the lane to the edge of the field.  I have grabbed the extension cord from the shed, and connected to the junction box that hangs on the outside wall of Jhampa’s empty house.  As I try to carry the long extension cord out to the edge of field where Armando waits, I find that the cord is hopelessly tangled.  Armando comes up to me and together we try to untangle it.  Eventually we manage, he plugs the generator up and fires it on.  Now we wait until the main tank, on top of the shed, overflows.  We go back to my house to wait.  He begins dipping a bucket into the near-empty tank, and carries water out to the strawberries.  I am busy distributing the new soil to the beds.  What I have so far growing is only a double row of snow peas, and arugula.  There are also the two scraggly tomato plants I rescued from Doug’s sewer line on the day the backhoe came.

                What is this new soil I am adding to the plants?  On Good Friday a very kind plumber came to my rescue.  His name is Antonio.  He is on the City payroll; he is the guy who turns on and turns off the water every day.  The municipal water is, for some obscure reason, turned off every night at 6 p.m.  It is his job to go around to the various valves and close them.  I have called him in the past to consult on the water situation at Luz.  This time I called him to solve a problem inside the house.  When the house was built, six years ago, it was done apparently without the help of a trained plumber.  When I went to install the sink cabinet that I had bought at Home Depot in December, it did not fit.  That is, the fixtures and drain were placed haphazardly.  The faucets were too high, and the drain rose out of the floor instead of the wall.  The cabinet did not fit!  Juan had chipped away the tile and brick to expose the water pipes.  He left the pile of debris on the floor, along with his tools, and walked away.  It stayed that way for days.

                Antonio came out on Thursday to look at my problem.  Being already on a payroll, Antonio did not ask for much compensation.  I gave him money to buy what materials he needed, and he promised to return the next day.  When he came, his wife and daughter were in his Jeep.  They stayed there while he went into the house to begin his work.  It took him a few hours.  I passed by the car door and introduced myself.  I chatted with his wife a bit, suggesting she get out of the car and sit somewhere more comfortable.  (Where?  Neither Mike’s house nor Doug’s house have a sitting area; Jhampa’s house is completely empty and unfinished.  My house is a mess.)    I noticed the ‘child’ in the back seat.  I got the impression of mental disability; the child is handicapped in some way.  The hair was short, the face square and unsmiling.  Her mother introduced her, Soni, and revealed that it is a girl.  I could not tell.  She could have been eight or eighteen. 

                I would go by the car and chat a little more, about the weather and the garden and such.  Eventually I rambled on about the strawberries, and how I needed to get to Durango to buy peat moss and fertilizer.  She also is a recipient of some of Jim’s strawberry plants.  She said to me that I did not need to go to Durango, that what I needed was right here on the farm.

                At that point, she got out of the car and walked me over to the pesky nettle trees.  We grabbed a hoe, a bucket and a dustpan.  Under the tree, she scraped with the hoe and piled up the loose soil there.  She said this was perfect material for loosening and feeding the soil around the plants.  We worked, scraping up two buckets full.  Meanwhile, Soni slept in the backseat.

                She saw the two pots containing the gladiola plants.  She said the flowers would never be able to break through the packed earth.  We dumped them out on a square of cardboard, and replanted them using this newly gathered soil.

                This woman’s visit was a great blessing.  I would love to have her as a friend.  She would not use my name, but called me ‘doña’, far more formal than ‘señora’.  I am stymied by the classist feature of the Canatlan society.

                When Armando came that day, he saw what was left in a bucket and smiled.  He recognized it immediately, and named the tree that created this good soil.

                Animatedly I expressed my frustration with this power situation.  I said, in the States we would band together and march with placards.  He said he and our neighbor, Mr. Reyes, were planning on going to the CFE office tomorrow to talk with the engineer.  I agreed to join them.

                The engineer had just come back from vacation.  He was still getting up to speed.  He heard our complaints very calmly, speaking with a smile and a soft voice.  He mumbled something about there not being enough trucks, parts, etc.  We did our best to put pressure on him.  A couple days later I was in the office to pay my bill, so I popped in to his office to see how he did with his phone call to Durango, the head office of the district.  He said he called, he left a message, but they haven’t called back.  He said he thought he should look at the resources in the field and see if he couldn’t find one transformer that wouldn’t be missed, and could borrow it to install at our site.  Hmmm.  At any rate, he said, by Thursday he would find us a solution.  Meanwhile, my city apartment rent is up, so it is time to move out to the country.  Without electricity?  I briefed Armando.  He said if we don’t have power by Thursday afternoon, we would make a visit to the Canatlan Mayor and see what she thinks of the situation.

                I am slowly learning the native ways of this place.  I look forward to the uncovering of so much more, as I grow closer to this new home land of mine.

Chula is Tired

It is Thursday, March 8, 2018.  Time marches on unmarked.  I have to struggle to remember my physical therapy appointments, Monday Wednesday and Friday at 3:30.  It is a good thing I did not have one today.  Chula and I overdid it.  When we got back to the house, we were both bone tired.

I got up and out early today, foregoing the gym once again.  I walked to the edge of Canatlan, where the dirt ‘railroad’ begins.  Workers headed to Pozole usually use this road.

Three buses passed.  I tried to flag down two, but I had Chula in tow; they did not stop.  I called Romualdo, but he said they had a stop to make before heading out to their job in Pozole.

I stood there for half an hour, trying to wave down cars that were headed for the Durango highway 23, the paved road to Nuevo Ideal that passes Pozole.  No one stopped.  I looked around me and picked out two big hand-sized stones, and started to do an upper body workout.  I was feeling virtuous, doing reps of familiar arm lifts; my right shoulder wasn’t interfering much.  Juan saw me and stopped his motorbike.  His passenger seat was loaded down with an electric motor and other stuff he was carrying out, so he could not give us a ride.  I was carrying two large plastic pots, which I plan to use for dahlia bulbs.  He took the time and effort to rearrange his tie-downs and carry these pots for me.

After an hour, Romualdo and his crew arrived.  There were four guys sitting in the bed of the truck, which was also loaded with boards used for frames in cement work.  They had left a spot on the bench seat for me and Chula. 

When I arrived in Pozole, instead of heading out on the Railroad street, the higher dirt road above the orchards, I headed into the center of Pozole, crossing the main bridge over the river which was just a trickle now.  I took a photo, to compare it to its condition in October during the rainy season. 

In Pozole I went to the little grocery shop.  The ‘community’ one was not yet open, as it was not yet 10 a.m.  I hope that is the only reason, and that the lady who works there, the one whose jaw looks like it got kicked by a horse and never repaired, is not ill.

I want to get my house hooked up to the water line that was installed last year, bringing water from the big dam.  At the store I asked for information about the Pozole water committee, as I was instructed to do by the Water Utility office in Canatlan.  They sent me to Sylvia’s house.  She is the helpful lady who lives next door to Juan’s unoccupied Pozole house, the one I almost rented (until I discovered it had no kitchen).   

As it turns out, her committee deals with potable water, and it does not extend outside the small town center.  So then I asked her about the dam water, and she gave me another name to contact, Javier Campos.  Okay, so here is the Campos family. In Canatlan, the lady who cleans the apartment building stairs, an older woman, is from Pozole.  She is of the Campos family, although she also now (thank you Lord, she says) has a house in Canatlan.  This is the first time I hear this name.  So far I know the Pozole list of family names is:  Delgado, Rodriguez, Reyes, Campos, Mijares (who own a hardware store in town, and who graciously allow me to use their mailing address for my internet mail orders), Terrazas and Martinez.

Pozole is a very small community composed of a limited number of intermarried families.  I have heard it described this way, by a woman in Canatlan, that Pozole is a homogeneous peaceful town, whereas Canatlan has a spectrum of conflicting values and social stratification.  The drunks, the druggies, the police, the gays and who knows what else.

                From the center of El Pozole I took the winding dirt road that is lined with orchards, and which has a creek running across it.  As I walked out to the house, I called this guy Javier Campos. He manages a private backhoe (as opposed to the city backhoe, which also can be rented).  It took a while for me to communicate what I wanted. Finally he said he would come out to Luz de Compasion and meet me, right away.  It took me another 20 minutes to reach the house myself.  He never showed up, as far as I know.

                Today is the day to finish sowing my seedling bed.  I put in seeds for arugula, another lettuce, ‘Sweet’, with tender leaves and a head (I had already sowed a head lettuce that was a variety, the package shows red leaves); tomatoes, green peppers, and just four artichoke seeds.  Juanito had been planting this same land for a few years, always putting in the same crops.  I would come to learn that the soil was exhausted; my sowing would come to naught.

                I added four more seeds to the beet row.  The other day I had already put some more snow pea seeds in a plastic container of mud, a compromise between soaking them first in water.  I planted more of the variety lettuce, some of the previous planting were already showing first leaves.  I hoed a row to loosen the dirt, and there planted carrots.

                In town, each day, I passed a knitting shop that had a bushel of bulbs by the door.  I finally stopped to buy some dahlias, I don’t know what colors they are.  They cost 5 pesos each ($1 = 18 pesos). They already had tiny sprouts.  The next day I bought two large plastic pots.  With Juan’s help, I got them to the house today and planted the dahlias.  I put them in the front of the house, which is still in confusion with mounds of dirt and separated rocks; to be combined for mortar.  Boards lie about, filled garbage bags of plastic soda bottles, and other scraps.  Obviously I could not put the bulbs in the ground; I trust they will be safe in the pots tucked up against the wall at the corner of the house.  Mexicans are big on planting in pots.  In time, the spears that rose quickly in those pots would prove that these were not dahlias, but gladiolas.

I had brought food with me this time.  I had been carrying around a packet of Chipotle tuna, and had that for a mid-morning snack.  Before I left for home, I also had a chocolate soy shake.  Even so, by the time we got back to the apartment we were too pooped to pop.

                We headed back to town on the calle de las carretas, the name of the street fronting our property that is bounded by orchards.  I usually take an access road between fields and get directly on the Railroad street above, but for some reason I turned left at the gate, instead of right.

                My head was filled with thoughts of hiring a backhoe, and getting fast tracked the wall project, the garage project, and also the septic situation.  I plan to have the septic tank removed, and instead employ the system used by locals.  Deep pits lined with rocks and covered with a concrete lid.

                The creek that needs fording is perhaps a half kilometer from the property.  As I walk along the road my meandering thoughts on these topics begin to take form.  I do not know where I would go to buy these rocks; I should not have to buy them.  As I walk along I see just the rocks that I need strewn along the side of the road.  There will be more by the river.  What I need is the use of a pickup truck for the day, and I should be able to gather enough rocks to do the job. 

Just then, Javier Terrazas rumbles up in the great big yellow Ford that he had salvaged from Luz de Compasion’s junk heap.  He stops to chat.  I am glad he is not holding a grudge over last week’s misunderstanding.  He had started to dig the hole for the wall, jumping the gun.  I had not yet a fully formed plan, and he and I had not talked about payment.  He grabbed Eduardo and promised him a big payoff, and expected me to pay for the job by meter instead of by day.  This was all from his fanciful imagination; I had finally worked out the plan on the weekend, but did not arrive until midday Tuesday.  By then he had plowed ahead.  I put a stop to the work.  It would be another week before I actually paid him, and only day-laborer wage.  Juan, his brother, had pulled that pay-by-meter thing on me when I got back from the Fitness program in the States, fed no doubt by talks with Romualdo with whom I had left the task of laying the kitchen floor.  I pay much more using this method.  Juan agreed yesterday that after he finishes my bedroom, he will go back to the day wage. 

Since my mind was bubbling over with the idea of rocks to line the septic hole, I chatted with Javier about it.  Maybe I would borrow his truck for a day.  Anyway, he said he was headed to Canatlan and so I hopped in (this car rides very high; there is no handle on the roof to use for leverage; he had to grab my arm and pull me in) and we headed to Canatlan.  Along the way we remarked about all the rocks that lie scattered by the roadside. 

I commented that Jhampa would be pleased to see the yellow truck back on the road.  Just then, the car stopped.  He hopped out, saying it needed gas, which he had in the truck bed.  He was not able to get the truck running again, so after some minutes Chula and I hit the road again, but at least we had far fewer than eight kilometers ahead of us.

The sun bore down on us.  It is 80 degrees today; not a cloud in the sky.  Chula would pass into the shade of a low tree, stop, and look at me with her tongue hanging out.  I felt for her, but she would not drink out of my water bottle.

We trudged on, putting one foot in front of the other.  When we got to the church plaza I did not head to our street immediately.  I thought it would be nice to find a butcher and get some chicken.  The butcher, however, was still a block or two away when I passed the ‘antojitos’ restaurant that I see from my kitchen window.  I stopped and ordered something.  I was too tired to cook, anyway.  It was a burrito with beans and cheese, on a flour tortilla.  I asked for it ‘to go’; I could not eat in front of Chula, who was still so thirsty.

Finally, dragging ourselves up the two flights of stairs, we arrived home.  With her tail wagging she ran to the water bowl and slaked her thirst noisily.  I sat down on my one chair, having poured myself a glass of white wine, and ate my lone burrito.  After that, we both curled up for a well-earned nap.

I woke up later and figured it was time to go buy some real food.  Usually when I rattle the keys Chula jumps up and runs to the door.  Not today.  She opened one eye from under her paw; not another muscle twitched.

I went to the corner market and bought nopales and ‘carne al pastor’.  I also bought for Chula a packet of moist Pedigree dog food, beef flavored, her favorite.  We both had nourishing meals after a very long day.

I resolved to search for a second hand motorbike, so we won’t have days like this again.

Spaying Dog

Spaying Dog (Chula)

                There are a number of veterinarians in Canatlan.  Jim had experience with some of them, but I have learned to discount his experiences as relevant.  Not speaking Spanish, he often gets things wrong. On the main thoroughfare that leads into the town there is a block of wide avenue.  The hospital is on one side, the other side is lined with shops of all variety.  There is diagonal parking, yet there is seldom an empty space.  This is where I struck up a friendship with CeCe, the nurse who runs the ‘Angel’ Pharmacy.

                I had been checking into the veterinary shop there for many weeks, hoping to find a brush for Dog’s fur.  The old man implied that his son the vet isn’t there; he might bring brushes with him.  So I learned that the vet is a younger man, who is not there often.  One day I was lucky enough to pass by when the doctor was in.  I chatted with him for a while, and in the end agreed to bring Dog in to be spayed. 

                We had a mix up about where the surgery would take place.  I waited at the corner near my apartment for half an hour, expecting him to pick me up.  I finally called him, and he said he was at his shop waiting for me.  We walked the few blocks in minutes, and the process began.

                He began the anesthetic immediately.  I held her until she was limp.  He was actually going to do the surgery right there in his shop, behind the counter! 

                As we talked I learned that he had worked for many years in San Miguel Allende.  He was impressed with what the foreign community had organized there.  On a monthly basis, all the vets and techs would assemble at one facility and in an assembly line, sterilize a hundred dogs in a day. 

                I thought that if he had that much experience, Dog was in good hands.  Let him operate wherever he wanted.

                I went back for her about an hour later, and carried her home.  She slept easily.  He had given me pain killers and antibiotics for her, but I did not use them.  The wound seemed clean.  Sure enough, as days passed, she was obviously pain and infection free.

                A week later Jhampa came to town.  He observed her wound, and agreed that this was a good doctor.  When his Shi Tzus were spayed, the wound was ugly red from sub cutaneous bleeding.

                It will be months before her belly hair grows back.  Until then, her big teats hang down for all to see.  Days later I ran into the vet again, and I asked him if he had left the uterus in.  I believed that, like humans, the uterus produced necessary hormones.  He informed me that the latest research shows that in fact, this is not the case with dogs.  Leaving the uterus in can result in cancer of the teats. 

                I asked the vet to estimate her age.  From the history that I had gleaned from Juan, I figured her to be around 5 years.  Juan had told me that she had had at least two rounds of pups a year apart, she had been living there in the countryside for maybe three years, and that she was not a pup when she arrived.  The vet did not narrow it down beyond a span of from 3 to 6 years.  I was a little surprised, because when I spent time at the ‘Pet Resource Center’ in Brandon, Florida, the age of the stray dogs were always written down, as if the vet could pin point it.  Now I understand that these posted ages were vague estimates.  At any rate, now she can live out whatever years remain without going through the trials of puppy birth and all that it entails.

          The cost was almost as high as in the States.

eggplant and nopales

Cooking experiments

Nopales are a staple here in Mexico.  I remember when I stayed with Gloria in her AirBnB, she told me that if I live in Mexico I have to learn to eat nopales.

I have not.  They have a green taste, grassy, and can have a slimy texture.  They are, after all, cactus.  I was visiting a friend, and he was fixing his meal.  He had nopales cooked in tomato sauce.  That, I thought, is the solution.  Ochre is also slimy, but it cooks up well in tomato sauce.  Why not nopales?

Cubed eggplant, sautéed in a little coconut oil for a couple minutes, and then topped with arrabiato pasta sauce.  Add water.  After a couple of minutes, add a package of nopales, chopped.  Lastly, after a total of five minutes, add lentils (orange) and let simmer 15 minutes.

Bought carne al pastor.  Sounds like lamb, doesn’t it?  No, it is pork marinating in a red sauce. 

Sauteed half a white onion in coconut oil. (does this add coconut flavor?  yes)  Added a little water, covered, let simmer.  Opened a new can of ‘dulce chipotles’.  Sweet, hah!  Smoked, is that what chipotle means?  Or is it a kind of pepper?  Chopped up one soft pepper from the can, added it to the onion, then added the meat.  Stirred it around, turned it over, then covered it.  It got tender very quickly.

Later, after dinner:  Well, the chipotle added a nice flavor, but no heat.  I could have added two more.  The meat cooked quickly, being coarsely chopped, and was tender.

The vegetable dish was good, but the dahl did not cook as it should have.  Perhaps in the past I toasted it first.  The nopales retain their texture, adding a slight crunch to the dish.  Since eggplant is one of my favorite vegetables, I will continue to enjoy this dish for quite a few days.  I made a big pot.

How many calories?  I have no idea.  In which case, the key is portion control.  I had about a quarter cup of each, the veggies and the meat. 

A fresh loaf of crispy Italian bread would have just hit the spot.