After two years of helplessly watching several evergreens and cedars in our ranch, some as tall as 20 feet, suddenly brown up and die, we may have found a cure. Yesterday, our eagle-eyed gardener Ulises showed me a frond from a Michoacán pine whose long needles seemed to be infested with reddish somethings the size …
Continue reading A cure for what's killing our evergreen trees?
The skies over San Miguel this time of the year are frequently cloudy, but that's only a tease. They promise rain but deliver only a couple of timorous sprinkles of little benefit to the plants and trees, except to rinse the dust off the foliage. Last night we had one of those teasers: It came …
Stew and I had the good fortune to be able to retire at age 57, several years earlier than most of our work colleagues and friends, which afforded that much extra time to satisfy our appetite for traveling. Though we've not been to the Far East, we've traveled from Iceland to Antarctica, and the Galápagos Islands …
A few years back I got embroiled in yet another email argument with a friend whom I respect, about gun ownership. Our opinions on guns, and politics in general are, and remain, as diametrically opposed as east and west. He's a firm, long-time owner, who, if I recall correctly, keeps a couple of handguns in his …
Continue reading The futile search for a solution to gun violence
Tomorrow evening Stew and I will be going on a thrice-postponed trip abroad, our first since the Covid-19 pandemic began more than two years ago. We've been vaccinated twice and received the booster, in addition to a flu vaccine and the first of two shingles vaccines. And of course, we'll carry our KN-95 masks in …
Continue reading To mask or not to mask? But why? Does anyone know?
Stew checked our rooftop weather station a couple of days ago and found that, so far this year, we've had 0.07 inches of rain. That's damn close to zero. He also found that relative humidity during the past week has been in the low double digits, sometimes dipping down into the single digits, particularly inside our …
Continue reading Mother Nature cuts through the gloom of current events
Stew and I are avid movie watchers—this year we had seen most of the Oscar nominees for Best Picture—but we are also impatient with the notoriously long-winded award ceremonies. We record the broadcast so we can zip through the endless commercials, meh comedy skits, acceptance speeches that turn into orations, and other chaff that consume …
Continue reading The unbearable wokeness of the film industry
While living "off the grid" may have an ecologically virtuous ring to it, some definite inconveniences come with the lifestyle, in this case having no garbage pick-up for three weeks, which sent us looking for the San Miguel trash dump. The location of the dump is apparently a well guarded secret, and only Stew's …
After a little over 12 years of service, a few weeks ago we replaced the two monster lead acid battery packs of our solar electric system with a deceivingly petite set of lithium ferro phosphate (LFP) batteries. The change felt somewhat comparable to trading in a lumbering, gas-guzzling—but familiar—2009 Crown Victoria for a snazzier set of …
Just this afternoon, I received this Messenger text from my family in Kyiv. The grammar is not great but their message is clear. I feel frustrated. Wish I could do something for them.We are all in Kyev. It is really dangerously. The real war. I could not imagine such a scenario in the worst dream. …
El Rancho Santa Clara 