It’s been a month since we last blogged. If you’ve wondered what happened, it’s because it’s the rainy season, as usual. We haven’t had good phone or dial-up internet so connection with the outside is spotty and unreliable. At best we can check our email but it is a long process of multi-tasking. Generally, I connect, make the bed, type in my email, do a little vacuuming, open an email, vacuum some more, etc… It can take 45 minutes to look at 3–5 emails.
Each afternoon the skies become laden with gray clouds that pile up and rumble with thunder building until it breaks into torrents of hard rain. At night the lights are strobing on the walls of our rooms and we brace ourselves with each bright flash for a crackling, crashing, VA-BOOM! Believe it or not, we go to sleep. By morning, the rain is gentle, the lightening is distant and softly illuminating and the mountain tops are left with a thick white mist making us feel like we’re in Washington’s Cascades. It’s part of our normal life for this time of year. In 6 years we have lost 3 modems and several phones due to lightening strikes. Twice the atmospheric charge made our hair stand on end and the air snapped and cracked a blue light like a whip in the room. Sometimes at night we watch the dramatic show of nature from the veranda before turning in.
So, what are our days like during the rainy season? Wally stays busy tending his trees. He’s been taking out mature mangos so that his young, new exotics will have more sun and more space to mature. He works alone, felling trees one by one, then cutting them and hauling them away. He’s super-strong and fit from handling the heavy chainsaw and hauling heavy branches. His stamina is incredible.
My days are mostly inside. I spend a lot of time in the kitchen. When Wally comes in he’s thirsty and hungry and I like to reward him. I bake bread in this crazy heat starting early in the morning. I also have more to do to keep the house clean with wetness being the culprit, ie. mud, dogs and sweat-soaked clothes. In between floors and chores I paint, read, study Spanish and think. In the afternoon I venture outside to exercise the dogs, collect eggs and fruit, and look at Wally’s projects. As the light fades and the rumbling grows stronger we all merge back to the house. We shower against the green-lit backdrop of the mountains and the strobing of lightening. The dogs always come in to watch the ritual. I take a scrubber to Wally’s body to rid him of ticks and dirt and anything else that has stuck to him and we talk about the work of the farm, catching up on each other’s day. Sometimes if one of the dogs is particularly odorous we snag him for a scrub in the tub too. The rest of the pack seek out whatever dim corner they can find to vanish unnoticed. After we’re good and clean we stretch out in the bed and each dog settles on his own futon around our bed on the floor. We watch the light show against closed eyes, listen to the weather and one another and so another day has passed.