Fixing a hole...

"I'm fixing a hole where the rain gets in and stops my mind from wandering where it will go…"

Helping my neighbor, Raul, build his own
self-wicking garden beds

These lyrics by Paul McCartney are a pretty good metaphor for what I'm doing here in Oaxaca. Working full time back in the States I didn't feel like I had time for wandering, for exploring. But here in Oaxaca, I entered what seemed like an ocean of time - 6 months off. I have developed the internal mantra, "I have time". When someone wants to stop and chat on the street, "I have time". When we come across music and dancing in the street, "I have time". When someone wants help with their garden project, "I have time" (Of course, I brought myself down here with me, and I do tend to overcommit, but that is probably raw material for another blog entry :-) ).


"I'm taking the time for a number of things that weren't important yesterday, and I still count…"

Turning the compost pile at El Pedregal.
Not everyone's idea of a good time,
but it works for me! 

Passing our half-way mark around New Year's Day (3 months down, 3 to go), it suddenly felt like the ocean of time ahead of us became half an ocean. And more recently, we passed the 2/3 mark (4 months down, two to go). But still, on a daily basis, "I have time". But reaching these mile markers has inspired me to reflect on what we have done so far, and to think intentionally about what I want to do with the rest of our time here. When we get back to the States in April, I don't want to look back and feel like the time got away from us. So I guess it's time to write up the punch list.

I want to continue my work at El Pedregal, to continue with our compost trials so we can learn how best to improve the soil. I want to do what I can to help people here grow organic food, on top of their houses if that is the only sunny spot they have, and I'd like to shore up some connections with locals who might like to partner with me in that effort. And I'd like to tour an organic Oaxacan coffee farm, if that's not too much to ask. Is that too much to ask?



"And it really doesn't matter if I'm wrong. I'm right where I belong. I'm right where I belong!"

Right where I belong. 

Without the burden of a paycheck, I have had the luxury of doing "what my hand turns to" (where does that quote come from, anyway?). And what I have found is that, in addition to writing this blog,  I seem to enjoy helping people grow organic food!

My hope is that, through this Sabbatical process, the next phase of my work life will emerge. But that in itself can be a trap: I can get so caught up in the goal of defining the next phase of my work life that I miss the wide open ocean of time that I am traveling in, and forget to relax. Really relax.

¡Familia!

A downside of being in Oaxaca for 6 months (and there aren't many) is that I don't get to see my kids. I'm used to not seeing Evan or Quinn very often, since they live in SF and WA, but I loved stopping by the University of MN on my way home from work to visit Hannah, and Beau just moved back to our neighborhood before we left. So my spirits were high on Jan. 11, when Randy and I headed to the airport to retrieve the 4 of them. By the time we put them all in a taxi to return home 8 days later, our sides hurt from laughing so much, our wallets were empty from going everywhere and doing everything, and my eyes were stinging with tears. It's great to be able to enjoy your kids as adults.

Highlights of the visit included the Zapotec ruins of Monte Alban, the incredibly beautiful Hierve el Agua, a tour of Randy's work at El Pedregal and the obligatory participation on an En Vía tour. But the best day was spent with our adopted Mexican family, la familia Marquez Prado, learning to make tamales.

The Family Arrives

Evan, Beau, Randy, Quinn, Hannah.

The Carne Asada, aka Smoke House at the 20 de Noviembre Market.

Tacomer, one of our favorite taquerias. We are usually the only gringos there.

You need good sunglasses in Oaxaca!

Exploring the ruins.

 Monte Alban

How did that butterfly get all the way up here?

Hanging out at Home

                           It was fun to hear Beau's new songs.

Cards and Loaded Questions. We laughed till we cried.

En Route to El Pedregal

Getting ready for the super-steep 1 km hike up the mountain.

Smith's (pronounced Smit's) juice bar in Huayapam.

It's good to know how to make a spear from things you find lying around.

En Vía Tour

Evan takes a try at carding raw wool.

Beau spins the wool the old-fashioned way.

Hannah tries her hand at weaving on the loom.

.

Quinn with her new tapete, shown by the weaver, Irene.

I love visiting this group of En Vía women on a tour.
They demonstrate from start to finish how they make their
fabulous wool rugs.

Hierve el Agua

Randy says there must be a name for the condition I have -
when a mother keeps arranging for trips to places with steep
drop-offs, then spends the entire time yelling "Get away from
that drop-off!"

The red in the photo is Evan. See why I'm nervous?

Despite the name, the agua was nowhere near boiling.

The girls made the best of the refreshingly-cool water.

All that rock climbing got the boys ready for a dip.

View of the pools and calcified falls. One of the most beautiful
and unusual places I've ever been.

Making Tamales with the Marquez Prado Family

Alicia and her mom, Ofelia, made it look easy. Hannah spreads the mole.

First you spread the masa on a banana leaf, then you add
mole negro and chicken.

Quinn checks out the banana leaf.

¡Ya, basta! Enough photos!

Sergio and Karime with our kids.

Around Town

Beau busking on the streets of Oaxaca.

I wonder if it helps to have your Dad standing right next to you?

Night at the billiard hall.

Beautiful view of Santo Domingo - and Hannah!

Beau gets a trim from our friend Pepe.

Gift-giving: Attempt 2

After spending time in Thailand and Mexico this past year, something has become really obvious and troubling to us. Almost all the ads we've seen in both countries feature models (mostly women) who look nothing like the majority of those populations. Even companies that are Mexican-owned and produce their own advertisements use fair-skinned, light-haired, blue-eyed people. While in the U.S. the trend is ambiguous ethnicity, there is nothing ambiguous  here.

It was a lot more fun to buy these shoes than the last pair.

I hope Jarod likes the shoes more than the soap...

Randy and I sponsored a couple of kids from a local shelter for Christmas http://www.hijosdelaluna.org/.  Both kids wanted tennis shoes (and it was cathartic for us to return to the "scene of the crime," the zapatería where we bought Aracely's shoes). Jarod also requested dish soap (somehow I don't think this was his idea) and Lolita wanted a doll. The soap was easy; the doll...not so much. Not because there is any shortage of dolls here, but because we refused to buy this little Mexican girl a doll that looked like it was from Sweden. At the first store I had a chat with the saleswoman, asking if there weren't any dolls that were more representative of the country we were in. She suggested we go to the big market and buy a "regional" doll - the kind tourists collect, not the kind a kid plays with. After talking a bit more, she became more animated and told me that because they are all "bombardeado" on TV, in ads, etc., with images of "white" women, this is the ideal, this is what the kids want, this is what the dolls look like. "Frozen" was the only word she said in English.

Perfect! 

Determined, we pressed on. The doll situation was about the same everywhere, with Barbie the ubiquitous favorite. And let's face it; skin tone and hair color are only the tip of the I-can't-relate-to-this iceberg with Barbie. Some dolls had brown hair (none black) and eyes went as far as hazel, but their plastic skin was all about the same - a pasty white. Which is really ironic, because in real-life it is not a flattering skin tone, as evidenced by the popularity of tanning booths.

We finally found one - ONE - doll that met our criteria: Dora the Explorer. Luckily, one was all we needed. We considered it a bonus that she was the image of a brave, adventuresome girl - and was not sporting a thigh gap (but that's another matter).

 A friend in Minneapolis, Leslie Rapp, recently wrote about taking her "Little Sister" to see Cinderella at the Childrens' Theater. Leslie told the girl, who is African American, that in this play Cinderella was going to be black. The little girl argued with Leslie, because everyone knows that Cinderella has blond hair, etc., etc. The curtain opened and there was Cinderella. And she was black. And Leslie's "little sister" just about melted with happiness.

Thank God for Bart, making everyone feel good about themselves!

Oh, and by the way, when we paid for the shoes at the store we used a credit card. We were asked for ID and we didn't have any with us. Guess what happened? Not only can we buy plenty of dolls that look like us here, we can buy things without showing the asked-for identification.

Now we just hope Lolita isn't disappointed she didn't get a Frozen doll...

   

The kids at Hijos de la Luna will open these
presents on Three Kings' Day, Jan. 6.

Rooftop Garden Quick Tour

When deciding where to locate a vegetable garden, the most important consideration is sunshine. You can fix bad soil, you can fix a steep slope, but you can't fix a lack of sun. And the entire front yard of our "casita" is shaded by a giant ficus tree.

This giant ficus tree shades our  whole front yard.
And it is doing one heck of a job on the sidewalk, too!

Pepe's Ladder

The only "full sun" spot was on the roof. But to get to the roof, I had to first build a ladder. Sarah has a bit of a fear of heights, so if I wanted to lure her up there to visit my garden, I had to build the ladder tall enough to extend beyond the roof line, and make it narrower at the top. That way she would have something to hang on to while she inched her way around the ladder onto the roof, and again when she inched back onto the ladder to climb down. Just to keep it interesting I made the rungs all slightly crooked and varied the spacing. I call it my Mexican ladder. Our neighbor, Pepe, was so impressed with the ladder that he asked if he could buy it from me when we head back to the states. He calls it my American ladder. But I couldn't accept money for it, so it will have to be a gift.

Container acquisition

Since there was no soil on the roof, I would have  to grow in containers. That sounds like a simple enough solution - in the states, we would just drive down to the garden center and buy everything - from soil to seeds to containers - all in one trip. But not here in Mexico (at least not without breaking down and going to Walmart, which I refuse to do). Here you have to kind of just start asking around for each item, and follow any leads. We found crates at the November 20th (Street) Market, bought bags of soil from a guy we happened upon outside the Pochote Market, bought waste baskets at the Chedrawi store. Sarah has a friend named Mica who is also a little nutty for growing veggies. Mica and I followed every lead for veggie seeds or seedlings that we could find. I bought lettuce seeds from a woman at the Pochote Market, whom I have not seen since. We found an American woman who advertises seedlings on FaceBook, and I bought strawberry and green pepper seedlings from her. I found a dried out climbing bean on my way to El Pedregal one day, and stopped to collect all the bean seeds. We found an actual organic seed rack in the back room of a coffee shop, and I bought tomato, pepper, and herb seeds to share (all labeled in Spanish, of course, so I really have no idea what I am growing).  Herb plants are easier to find - they are commonly sold at markets, potted in black plastic bags. Bill and Carol, a couple from Canada, gave us a tour of their rooftop garden system, and sent us home with cherry tomato and squash seedlings - as well as a much better idea of how to build "wicking beds" (planting beds that include a water reservoir below that wicks water up into the soil above). Some of our garlic started to sprout, so I added some of that to the beds, too.

But enough of introductions, let's start the tour!

…we're on the roof! 

As we step around the ladder...

The trellis is made from "cariso", a  bamboo- like weed that grows alongside the creeks and ditches. PVC pipe allows me to refill the reservoirs beneath the beds.  The scale of the trellis is a bit ambitious given we only have another 3 months here. But I am optimistic, and ready for growth! The next-door neighbor, Raul, from on top of his roof, commented that he thought the garden looked attractive, and that HE'D like a garden like mine on HIS roof, so I offered to help him build it (keep in mind, this transaction occurred in Spanish, so I am actually not sure what I agreed to!).

Center crate: Cherry toms, beans and squash in the back,
lettuce in the front

Left crate: twin wicking beds of strawberries,
beans, swiss chard, garlic and tomatoes

Right crate: twin wicking beds of squash,
beans, tomatoes and garlic

Every good garden needs a security system...

The neighbor's dogs keep watch day and night,
but mostly they just bark indiscriminately. 

…an irrigation system...

A drip in the water filter provided enough water for the garden
so that I didn't need to haul buckets up the ladder -
until, that is, the water guys came this week,
and the leak seems to have stopped :-( 

…and a compost system to make use of household food and yard scraps.

Rigo, the gardener, saved the garden clippings,
Pepe, the neighbor, loaned me his drill,
and I modified a couple of trash bins.
The tire helps with "turning the pile"

Simple design: plastic basket inside plastic bin
allows me to control air flow.
A daily inspection tells me when I need to add moisture. 

New to me since we came to Mexico is "lombricomposta" - worm composting. I started my own bin almost three months ago, and I haven't killed off the workers yet. These "California Wigglers" were bred in the 1970's, in California, to feed on food scraps,  multiply quickly, and provide rich worm manure. It's fun to have pets that you WANT to poop!

Here's one of my workers inside the basket
with plenty of food. 

Some of the workers escape from the basket
into the bin from time to time,
but they somehow find there way in again
when they get hungry

With only three months left here in Mexico, I am not sure we will get much in the way of vegetables, or compost for that matter. But I am having the time of my life. And I am hopeful that someone - if not Pepe or Raul, or Rigo, or Carol and Bill, or Mica - will be happy to take all of this off my hands when we leave in March.