Each day I learn so much...

 

Every day I learn so much in contact with the earth, as though my feet opened my nostrils, and I am sure they do, awakened to the  scents of the earth, they speak to me and tell me of their provenance. I am a "penca de tapón" or I am a "penca de duraznillo".  Today the plain nopal said very little to my nostrils, while the others reminded me of the taste of their fruit and its texture though it will be some time before they birth their fruit.  This year the winds have been gracious, generous, coming at a time stimulated the nopales and the mezquites and perhaps, most certainly, other plants.  The lavender that cohabitates this landscape and that I deeply pruned less than a week ago is emerging with new budding blossoms.  I can feel in the pruning of this plant and that, this tree and that, the mezquite, the tepozán, all variety of nopales, the lavender, they all breathe more easily when the air can move through their branches and their branching architecture is strenghthened with clarity of form—reaching heavenward from somewhere in the earth, even if that earth is limestone.  The tepozanes are undaunted by limestone, they seem to enjoy finding crevices and making the soft stone into their own white soil, donning and luxuriating in its alkalinity like silk.

I am in awe of the way the saw moves more smoothly on the diagnonal of the mezquites, it reminds of how our own bones grow in spirals.  Is there anything that does not grow in a spiral.  As I remove small branches or those that are dried out, I notice how the branches too have grown into place in a spiral.

I am in awe of the way the nopal trees grow.  To be able to prune them back so we can cohabitate the landscape,  I notice how their very heavy branches sometimes reach heavenward, sometimes reach earthward, most often play labyrinthine games of counter balance.  The branches that reach to the earth penca by penca most surely seek a place to take root or even to drop to the earth to make a life away from their parent nopal... 

Pruning nopales teaches you respect.  Where is your head, your arm, your elbow, the curve of your butt in relation to this dance?  Which way is the wind blowing, is it dry, or is it damp, is the sun now too high?  All of these are factors that must be considered in relation to their spines, some are very fine and fly like dust. What will the collaboration between weight, gravity, and angle mean in the determination for where they fall?

Yesterday was extraordinary in its density of lessons... early, before the sun even began to illuminate the sky with its first colors, I went to the kitchen.  There, in the honey jar I had left open on the counter, was a gray lump of a form, I looked again, saw it had small eyes looking up at me, it was a mouse... "Are you alive" I asked... she shugged, lifting her shoulder ever so slightly, just enough for me to see how stuck she was.   "Don't worry" I told her... "I will get you free"... I put the jar in a bowl of warm water which got cold quickly with the morning chill, again and again I refilled the bown and she was first able to dislodge her shoulder from the thawing stickness of semi crystalized honey.  I warmed water on the stove to dip the jar into, and slowly she dislodged part of her side, her forearms, but all while the curve of her tail seemed to be still firmly in place, at last she was able to free her front paws and reached upwards towards the mouth of the jar.  While still viscous, the honey was now fluid enough for her two move out of, and so, I tilted the jar towards the top of the cabinet from which she was able to reach up to a hanging cup, clime up on it, and find her way to the iron chain that held the hanging structure for pots in place. With increasing ease she was able to climb each link in the chain and then jump to the ledge at the top of the wall, using her now familiar route across the top of the wall to find her way out between the tejas of the roof, its iron "tubular" support structure and out into the last moments of night before sunrise...

I have another story to tell about all I learned from the chickens and the part the dogs and I had to play... but that will have to wait...