Welcome to my rainy day kitchen ...

This is the view from my kitchen window

It is an overcast and rainy day.  Me and the dogs are keeping busy inside.  As you can see I have plenty of kitchen help. 

That view of the hills and mangos above is what I see from my kitchen sink... not a bad view from a scullery, heh?  I can wash dishes and lose myself in the beauty of the day.

My kitchen is on the 3rd floor - a long way to carry groceries but worth it. Wally built me an electric lift for the really heavy loads.











This is where we eat.  The veranda is open to the outside with lots of plants and herbs, a thoroughfare for butterflies and hummingbirds and always a breeze from the mountains behind us or the ocean in front.

It's like living in a tree-top only on a day like today it's nice and dry. 





Wally built the house after we married. Mostly my job was to take care of him while he worked.  The kitchen moved from room to room until we got to the roof and that's where we wanted it to stay.  It has a panoramic view of mountains and the Pacific.  He gave me to the best kitchen ever - a kitchen I hate to leave.  Pretty smart guy. 

Front view from the veranda - the village of Aticama and the Bay of Matanchen.

Meet Kevin...

Okay, it's not a common name for a dog.  And it's not a name that ends in "-ie" like ALL our other rescued dogs.  And this makes 8...  NOW my son says I've got a problem... I know, I know.  He can't reconcile the mom with white furniture to the mom with a crazy amount of dogs.

But, my excuses are you have to live here to understand.  It's a harsh world.  Also, I have a husband who will NOT turn away from suffering no matter how inconvenient or gross or what variety of life form.  He is my shining hero. I just follow  -  mostly fearfully and reluctantly.  I want to turn my face away but then I watch him and I want to help and that's how it happens that we take home another ragamuffin... named Kevin.  

I never regret it.

Another hero, Joan Chittister says, "Everyday the suffering of the world look to the secure of the world to save them from even more disaster. It is not our job to work miracles but it is our task to try."  

Another start...

Well, it's been a year since we last blogged and like many areas where one lags the best thing to do is just start again.

I feel inspired to pick up on the blog because my sister and I spent the first week of June with my dad's wife and her family...our crazy, fun family! I really love and enjoy these folks and I want to keep growing up along side them. This is one way I hope to do that.

There are other folks who are important to us in addition to our families. There are friends, some who may not realize how much a part of our ordinary days they are, how alive they are in our thoughts, how affection can keep growing despite the time and distance.

It's important to maintain these connections because in the REAL economy it is people and a shared history that make us live richly.  The reason for slow living is to savor and nurture what is truly important and learn from it.

I had a realization while I was with my family:  they knew a different man than I knew most of my life.  The one they knew was a happy man. I think that Dad was able to become more of himself with Evelyne, his wife.  I can recognize that because it's true for me with Wally.  Love and acceptance is a powerful and liberating force and it can bring out the best in us so we can grow.  Evelyne is abundant in that department and so it is like good medicine to be around her.  Her kids, my sisters and brother and their mates are made of the same generous open-hearted material.  We had fun doing everything together, teasing and laughing the whole time and when it was over I came home with a brimming-to-the-top heart.  That's how my dad enjoyed his years and thrived with them and lucky for me I got to witness it and be a part of it.


So, it is with a big, fat, thankful heart that we blog again...

midnight rambler

It's election time again in Mexico, lots of loudspeakers blaring all the good reasons to vote for one candidate or the other.  One of the candidates for governor had a pretty nice pitch.  He offered a free outdoor movie with equally free popcorn and soft drinks.  I'd vote for him if I could.

We're busy getting ready for the rainy season.  Tomorrow we'll peel 7 years of plasticized roof coating off the cono and see what kind of a creative solution we can come up with.  I'm picking up Raul from San Blas at 9.  He's a wizard at sealing things up.  He has these wonderful mixes of white cement, sealer, ground marble and eye of newt.  It works.

It's been the usual balancing act with water.  Things get hot and dry just before the rain and it's a full time job keeping all the plants watered up.  Just got to get them to the rainy season.  Everyone is predicting around the 25th.  There are some whistling bugs that always start up just before the rain and they're whistling away.  Another good sign is the return of the lightening bugs.  I don't know where they go but they're faithful to show up every year.  I imagine they are calling to me to keep on just a little bit longer.

I've been working on the chicken houses.  Got lots of new Costa Rican babies and we have to house them somewhere safe until they're big enough to fend for themselves.  They're tasty little snacks for lots of night creatures.   One momma wants to perch outside on a branch with her 7 babies packed together under her wings.  I want her and the babies to sleep in the safe house I just built them.  At first I tried rounding them up while it was still light enough to see them.  It was pure comedy.   I'd get a few in the house and before I got back with more they had popped the door opened and escaped.  I'd eventually get them but what a job.  One night I got back after dark and went out to put them to bed.  They were perched on a branch under mom.  I had my 52-LED headlamp on and they calmly sat there as I scooped a handful of momma and four babies.  Nothing to it.  I put them to bed and went back for the other 3 who waited patiently for me.  It's as easy as picking mangoes.  They don't struggle at all.  I can see how the possums have an easy time of picking them off.

Next week Moochie Poochie is going in to have his pride and joys removed.  Our females are neutered but the vets left the ovaries so they still come in heat.  Big problem.  Coming down the stairs the other evening, Moochie and Winky got into it.  Fur was flying.  Amaranth was in the middle of it and got bit by one or both of her beloved babies when she tried to break it up.  I showed up with a big voice and everyone went to their corners.  Amaranth is a little sore but alright and the doggies are properly chaste.

We've had a bumper crop of lychees this year.  Imagine being able to eat all you want freshly picked drom the tree.  For those of you who don't know lychees, they're a tropical fruit the size of a small hens egg.  You peel off the bumpy, bright red shell and inside it's like a peeled grape with a seed in the middle.  You can't stop eating them.  Luckily we have 5 trees to keep us supplied.

Well, it's a couple minutes before midnight.  Better hit the hay.  5 o'clock comes soon enough.

  

This evening's pickings...

Sweet & succulent homegrown tomatoes… I like eating them right off the vine.  It's been a long, cool growing season since we planted vegetables last November and nary a bug or drop of rain. There are different challenges growing organically in the tropics.  Each year we refine what vegetable varieties will work and what is too fussy.  Okra and jamaica and hibiscus are in the same family of plants.  They thrive in the semi-tropics with little care.  The lettuces are going to seed as the weather warms up, but what was planted last is growing in the shade and we'll have another two or three weeks of salads.  After that we'll be getting our greens from sprouts and from our third crop of green beans. As it gets hotter we eat more fruits. Our first mangoes of the year should be ripe in a week. 

That's not all we harvested today.  Wally picked 3 large Jack Fruit and a ream of blue bananas.  You won't find blue bananas in your grocery store.  They are our favorites.  The flesh is nearly white and they have a creamy texture and tangy-sweet flavor.  They are blue-green before they ripen to yellow.

And each day as I wander around the place I can't resist picking a flower or a leaf, a bud or seedpod.  I bring them in where we can enjoy their art-fullness.  I made a shallow elongated vase for holding my little pickings.  It's place on the counter makes us pause, look closer and take in the pleasure of being here. 

The season of palms...

One of my favorite Mexican traditions is the celebration of Palm Sunday.  Each year San Blas artisans weave a variety of Christian symbols woven from palm fronds and grasses and sell them in front of the church. Some of the weavings are embellished with glitter and plastic flowers, or sprays of chamomile and rosemary. Beyond the bling the weavings are delicate and beautiful.  People gather to have their palms blessed by the priest's holy water and make a procession into the church singing: "Bendito el que viene en nombre del Senior. Hosanna, hosanna, hosanna!"  Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord...

I've been collecting this woven art-of-palms for years. I have some that are 6 years old. They start off green in color and smell and age into a pale gold. I display them against the wall above our bed as an altar to joy and art.  As they collect dust I take them outside and give them a good wave, cleaning them in the wind, mind-full of the cycle of time when they were part of a living palm tree, cut for a short celebration of hosannas and now in my hand, on my wall, a lasting memorial.

I am easily transported into the story described in Matthew of Jesus riding into Jerusalem on an ass, for I live in a land of palm trees and donkeys and sun-baked folks praying for some relief, longing for an extra-ordinary meaning to life.

Alive

Today I heard an interview with a man from Japan who had been trapped in his car by the tsunami.  He nearly died.  As the interview went on I learned that he'd lost everything.   There were no details about what "everything" was but I think it may well have been every thing he owned.  The interviewer asked him how he was doing and he replied, "I'm alive."

I've been alive long enough to have experienced a good many of the wide variety of things that a person can experience.  I've had my own tsunami-like experiences.  When I was in the midst of them I felt like my life might end and in some cases I wished it would end, but time passed and so did the unpleasantness.  Soon I found something to make me grateful to be alive again.  Here on the farm we have a whole universe of experience.  At the end of each day we are glad to have been alive to have experienced them.  Each day is a gift.  There may be tsunamis waiting around the corner for each of us but just focus on the day you've been gifted with and be glad you had a day to live through.

What touched me so much about the man being interviewed was that he was grateful to be alive and was wise enough to know that "alive"  has all sorts of possibilities.  After you've survived enough "tsunamis" you come to realize that "this too shall pass," and more of life awaits on the other side.

It was wonderful to hear about how people were opening their homes to strangers who had lost their homes. In the midst of something horrific many great acts of compassion sprang forth.  There will be many heartwarming acts of kindness to accompany the tragic events as they pass into the realm of memory.  The goodness will soften the sadness, people will rebuild their lives and move on.

Today we had a good day.  We accomplished a lot of the tasks that were in front of us in the morning and settled in for the evening with a good deal of satisfaction.  I have no idea what tomorrow may bring but today was a day well-lived and I'm glad to be alive.