Ever since we hired Félix seven and a half years ago, when he showed up at our gate practically begging for any kind of a job, he's proven to be a source of both awe and sadness, one of the smartest, hardest working and most decent family guys I've ever encountered but one too who'll …
Tag: gardening
San Miguel's Fake Spring
While our compatriots back home suffer through daily charges and countercharges of "fake news," in San Miguel we're in the middle of our fake spring, a teaser season that comes about three months before the rains and the real spring arrives. Fake spring brings warmer temperatures, mid seventies at midday and mid forties at midnight, and …
The beauty in serendipity
"Serendipity," with its musical ring, is a word that sounds like fun even before you know what it means. Literally it means "unexpected good luck" or stumbling into something terrific that you didn't imagine. Yet we often turn away from serendipity, our demand for certainty preempting many pleasant, even wondrous, surprises.During a recent trip to …
Gardening with Félix and Mother Nature
It's a ritual among gardeners, really more like a booby trap of frustration, to amble around the yard long before the planting season arrives and fantasize about exotic combinations of flowers and plants swaying in the breeze, such visions reinforced by the arrival of seed catalogs in January and February, and glossy gardening books that …
In praise of ugly, misshapen produce
When two days ago Félix brought in a large container of tomatoes from our garden, few qualified for the cover of a food or gardening magazine. Several grape tomatoes looked pretty natty alright, sassy and red, and one baseball-sized Brandywine turned out almost perfect, except for a small insect nip. But they were the minority.As …
Happy New Delusions
The new year, every new year, brings out the delusional in us. We resolve to meditate each morning at sunrise, perfect our tree pose in yoga or become devout vegetarians. Resolutions, delusions.My own and rather grand delusion, triggered every December by the arrival of seed and plant catalogs, is to plant a garden in which …
You call that a garden?
Midlife crises evoke dreams of a new career and in my case, about fifteen years ago, of becoming a landscape designer. After a few night courses at the Chicago Botanic Garden, a tentative verdict about my abilities came back from the teachers: I had a good eye for plant combinations but needed to double down …
Some Trees Grow in the Rancho
Looking more like twigs than trees, about 30 saplings sway awkwardly in the arid, dusty and increasingly hot landscape of Rancho Santa Clara. It's not an encouraging sight. These guys, some growing crooked, are practically invisible, scattered over the largely barren 7.5 acres of land. Amazingly, most are sprouting new leaves. At least three are …
El Rancho Santa Clara 