Bursting with Life

In our corner of Mexico the weather is lovely in February and March. We have blue skies and sunshine with tee-shirt-wearing temperatures during the day and it's cool enough to rest well at night. Perfect. Having no rain for weeks means that watering the garden is a daily joy.

Last week the clouds, coming inland from the Gulf of Mexico, started to bunch up around the east side of the Gran Sierra. The view got hazy. I started to notice the humidity of the air I breathed during my morning walks.

Wednesday evening there was a fine mist in the breeze. It felt like rain, but we didn't even get a brief shower. In the morning Chuy told me he had dreamed of a beautiful rain that watered his father's recently planted corn and beans fields. All the farmers in the village must have shared his hopes for a good soaking rain. We waited under a solid cloud cover.

As Steve finished doing the dinner dishes that evening we heard the swish of the storm's approach. Then the first tapping on the sheet metal roof began. Soon the gutters collected a steady fine stream of water to drop into the rain barrel.

We got a glorious, slow rain timed so the soil could drink up every drop. Friday morning the hill sides were puffing and sighing with satisfaction. A maze of cloud shreds still draped the folds and twirled over the high ridge tops. The sun, peeking out for the first time in several days, spotlighted the newly unfurled lime colored leaves on the white oaks putting them in sharp contrast with the tender ruddy-brown of the red oaks' new growth on the slopes above the village. All of them were bursting with new life. Perfect.

One Pine Tree At a Time

Yuya dropped by yesterday afternoon to get a tour of our garden. She usually has classes at the preparatory school in Ciudad del Maíz on Wednesdays, but the teachers had meetings all day and she got a day off.

Her first question was about all the tall grasses that I cultivate in the garden. They are wheat, barley, oats, and buckwheat that I grow to cut for making compost. Later in the spring I'll let them grow to seed which I'll collect for the next round of compost crops. (I only use open pollinated varieties, so I can save seeds to use and share.) We checked out the new compost pile I'm building up with all the plant materials that I'm clearing before a flurry of planting next week. I described the layers of green materials, the dry materials (sawdust right now because I don't have anything else), and the thinner layer of garden soil that is a catalyst for the good changes in a compost pile. In a way, it feels like I'm making a rich meal for the soil. I feed the soil; it feeds me. This made sense to Yuya.

She told me that she had taken a class last year in which they planted, tended, and harvested a garden at school. She liked to spend every spare moment after class in the garden. Here at home in Papagayos it's hard for her to keep a garden. Her mother's chickens scratch out everything she plants unless she covers the new baby plants with a lot of thorny brush. Even then, the children in the neighborhood often make a mess of things because she isn't around most of the time to watch over her garden.

Yuya went on to talk about her current classes; her favorite is Ecology. She has hopes for planting shade trees here in our village, especially near the Catholic chapel, the three schools, and the town playing field where soccer, baseball, and horse races happen in their seasons. I was delighted to hear of her thinking about this type of project, because I share her interest in planting and caring for beautiful public trees. She was a little frustrated, however, because she had recently found out that an opportunity to do just this had been lost to Papagayos. The town judge had been given the paperwork to apply for a state funded program of reforestation. Signatures had to be collected and the papers returned by a deadline. He did nothing with them. If only she had known, she would have willingly taken this responsibility on herself. "If we don't take action to care for our village, no one will," she said in exasperation.

During our first year here, Steve and I worked with students at the middle school to transplant trees in their schoolyard. Only a few have survived, but it was a start that I wanted Yuya to know about. She and I walked around to the shady side of our house to see the 38 young piñon pine trees that I sprouted last fall. I also have planted and am waiting for the sprouting of a few mesquitillo seedlings. The mesquitillo is a lovely local hardwood tree that has been completely eliminated close to our village because of over-harvesting and no reforestation. Through EcoSol we have made contact with the NGO Reforestamos México. (See the link to their website below.) They are providing educational and technical assistance to local groups all over the country to plant new forests and improve the health of existing woodlands. They are helping me learn to grow seedlings for future transplanting.

Yuya and I agreed that if each person takes action and does what she or he can, we will create a greener world.