It was a terrific and generous offer and then it got complicated. Jim Quinn, a good friend of mine and a colleague at the Chicago Tribune, where he worked as a photographer, offered to do a "shoot" of our new house, which he and his wife Karen like a lot. What could go wrong with …
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A brush with fire
After six months without a drop of rain the landscape is straw-dry and waiting to be kindled. Practically every day you see lines of low flames tumbling down some hill or marching across a parched field. San Miguel's rickety fire department may try to put out the brush fires particularly if they threaten someone's property, …
Mayan aluminum siding?
During the time of the Romans, architects learned how to build huge domed structures, the Pantheon in Rome probably being the most famous. Then all that technology and skill was lost during the Middle Ages, and Renaissance architects and engineers during the 1400s pretty much had to start from scratch when they set out to …
Desi to the rescue
In addition to his duties as gardener, painter and fixer-upper, our own Renaissance man Félix also works as watchman when we are away, spending nights in our house. Recently he's become more insistent, always politely, about his security concerns. Following our last vacation, when we went to watch whales in Baja California, Félix kept talking …
The limits of conservation
While still planning the construction of this house, we received a terrific piece of advice from our friend Roger: Make sure one of the bedroom windows faces east, so you can enjoy, while still in bed, the daily spectacle of a sunrise. We've since read that's a pretty standard consideration when siting a house but …
Yoga redux
When we first arrived at San Miguel five years ago, Stew and I joined a beginner yoga class held three times a week in the solemn setting of a 250-year-old former convent downtown. The room's 20-foot-ceilings, enormously thick walls and huge, creaky door seemed to fit the contemplative, ancient aura that I associate with yoga. …
Clash of the worlds
As you drive from our ranch, you'll go on a short stretch of dirt road, then take a right and travel for another three miles on a road that dead ends at a brand new highway. There you'll have a choice not only between turning right or left, or going to San Miguel or Queretaro, …
The annual rainless dance
The last time it rained was about four months ago and that's a literal not a relative or comparative statement: We haven't had a drop of rain for four months. On a few days we've awakened to a dense, almost tropical fog that hid mountains, trees and everything else to within twenty feet of the …
Murders, he wrote
During the past five weeks two Americans, or maybe three, were found murdered in San Miguel, adding to the smog of bad news and publicity already enveloping the town. In an American or Canadian city of comparable size, two or three homicides coming so close together would have raised public questions or perhaps just one: …
Loving animals in a foreign land
In a blog last August I talked about Chupitos, a hard-luck mutt that had shown up when we were building the house and which our gardener Félix had adopted, along with her two puppies. His kind gesture saved the three of them from certain death. We had the trio spayed, dewormed and vaccinated, and accordingly …
El Rancho Santa Clara 