During the past three weeks vegetation around the ranch has gone through a startling yin-yang cycle, swinging from somber brown to a myriad shades of emerald. Trees and bushes have leafed out, and hundreds of wildflowers appeared everywhere, each a unique celebration of the near-constant rain we've had. In years before I have tried to triage the …
Continue reading Mao says "Let a thousand (wild) flowers bloom!"
The rainy summer season is slinking away without the landscape reaching its peak kelly-green hue: We've had only half the amount of rain we normally get. I gauge rainfall by the amount of water collected in our cistern and it's only half-full. No reason to panic though: As I write this, dark clouds hover auspiciously …
Continue reading Constabulary notes from here, there and yon
Expats here sometimes muse nostalgically about the "changing of the seasons" back home, particularly autumn, when the leaves flip from green to shades of ocher almost overnight. In spring, nature then awakens and the landscape reverses to bright green; crocuses and other small harbinger bulbs peek tentatively out of the muddy ground and everyone goes …
In one particularly poignant entry in her "Diary", which Stew and I recently reread in anticipation of a trip to Amsterdam, Anne Frank talks about her remedy for unhappiness, loneliness and fear: "The best remedy for those who are frightened, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere they can be alone, alone with the sky, …
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 …
As I trudged through fresh mud this morning to photograph the nearby dry creek, which is finally gurgling and gushing downhill, I ran into another gift left by the heavy rains we've had during the past three days: hundreds, make that thousands, of wildflowers.Flowers popping up in the spring shouldn't be a revelation anywhere, except …
El Rancho Santa Clara 