Almost fifty years ago, I started writing my first novel. I was living in an apartment in Little Falls, MN at the time. I don’t think it had a title. I had no idea what I wanted to write about. I didn’t even own a typewriter. My novel consisted of a bunch of notes I had scribbled down on a yellow legal pad. Probably when I was drunk.
I don’t think any of the notes I had scribbled down actually looked like a novel. It was mostly ideas I was contemplating trying to turn into a novel. I had a few of the chapter titles written down in my notes. You know, like, I had an outline or something. The only thing I’m sure of is the title of this post was the title of one of the chapters of one of the books I never wrote.
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In one of my previous posts I mentioned that I suffer from Involuntary Musical Imagery, otherwise known as an earworm. Usually, it’s just annoying. But for the last month or so it has been almost intolerable because the song that was stuck in my head was Coward of the County by Kenny Rogers.
I know, right!
The song was bad enough when it was released in 1979, having to hear it 20 times a day or more on the radio. There are no words for the torture that it was having to hear it for all of your waking hours for 30 days in a row. or more. I’m just relieved that it somehow got kicked out of my mental playlist. Finally.
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Hey. How’s it going? I hope you’re all surviving the seemingly never-ending saga of the Coronavirus pandemic. I don’t think it’s even been one whole year since this thing started. And yet, it somehow feels like it’s been going on for most of my life. And I am old.
I don’t think I know anyone that has died to death from COVID-19. Several of my friends have had it, and they have all survived. However, several of my friends have lost friends or family members to the Coronavirus. I’ve been extremely fortunate so far. I hope my luck holds out for a very long time to come.
Up in the States, most of my friends have received one of several types of vaccines that are now available. Most of them have posted pictures on social media with their official documentation, which is something we’re all going to need in the future if we ever want to travel to another country, or possibly, even leave the house.
I don’t think any of the vaccines are available here in the Lakeside Area. My doctor thinks they might arrive here by June or July. Or maybe next year. This is Mexico. Time is very relative here. And there’s this: Many of the people that live here are gringos from different countries. Canadia. The US. England. New Zealand. South Dakota…
I’m not sure we’re a huge priority to the Mexican Government.
Up until he contracted COVID-19, the Mexican President didn’t believe the pandemic was real. I’m not sure how much his experience has changed him. Andrés Manuel López Obrador has been a bit a of an enigma while he’s been in office. He’s turned out to be a disappointment to almost everyone that voted for him.
Much like unto the former President of the United States, AMLO didn’t do much of anything to stop the spread of the Coronavirus in Mexico. He left that up to the governors of the 31 states. The governor of Jalisco, Enrique Alfaro Ramírez, has been very proactive in trying to keep the people he represents safe and healthy. and alive. And that hasn’t been an easy accomplishment.
Not because the people of Mexico haven’t complied with most of the preventative measures that we’ve all experienced. No one down here has protested about alleged infringements on their rights or freedoms. It’s the whole family thing.
Family ties are huge down here. Ask any Hispanic person you happen to see and they will tell you that family means everything to them. Families here get together as often as they can to celebrate anything and everything. Or nothing.
Hey, man. The ‘Rona might kill me, but if I don’t go to my abuela’s birthday party– She’s gonna be 95 this weekend! — I’m a fuckin’ dead man for sure! At the very least she’ll slap me silly with her chanclas.
And that’s not an exaggeration. Not going to a family gathering can have serious repercussions. So now you have a better idea of the situation down here.
Governor Alfaro has ordered at least three major lockdowns in the last year, and I don’t know how many minor shutdowns. His latest directive will remain in effect until December 15th — pretty much the rest of the year. I think he just got tired of having to re-issue statements every other week.
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Despite the fact that there isn’t much to do here because there just aren’t many things to do not only here, but pretty much everywhere right now — we’ve been keeping busy here at the Chula Vista Resort and Spa. Retirement has turned out to be a helluvalot more work than I ever imagined. That probably wouldn’t be true if we weren’t the Stewards of the Realm at the Chula Vista Resort and Spa.
We’ve spent a lots of time and money improving a place that doesn’t belong to us, and more than likely, never will. Those things weren’t part of our rental agreement — we aren’t obligated to do any of them. I’ve written about all of them in previous posts, so I don’t think I’m going to list them all again. But the longest and most expensive endeavor we’ve taken on has been renovating the yard and all of the gardens.
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Every living thing goes through various stages of development in its lifetime. According to a guy named Erik Erikson, humans have eight distinct stages. I know I had to memorize them when I was in nursing school. And then I forgot almost everything about them because once you get out of nursing school, no one is ever going to ask you about them again.
The one thing I do remember about them is they all had kooky-sounding names — like, your biggest challenge in each stage was not to kill yourself, or everyone else you meet. Trust vs. Mistrust. Autonomy vs. Shame & Doubt. Initiative vs. Guilt.
See? I told you.
According to Mr. Erikson, the stage of development I’m currently in is Integrity vs. Despair. Whatever. I see it more as a setting in of the Three G’s. In alphabetical order: Gardening, Getting Older, and Golf.
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Lea and I both prefer things to look neat and orderly. And so does Todd for that matter. Todd is our roommate. He moved here from Idaho about a year and a half ago, and took up residence in one of our guest rooms. He’s Lea’s oldest friend, and he’s become my closest male friend and golf partner.
That whole neat and orderly thing: that was probably the greatest impetus in our decision to improve the appearance of pretty much everything in the yards. That’s why we decided to have the pool repainted. And to annihilate the Royal and Ancient Hedgerow, and all of the other vines and vegetation that hadn’t been trimmed or manicured in the last forty years. All of those things started way back in the middle of last October.
I’m sure the lockdowns and shutdowns and restrictions from the Coronavirus had something to do with our decision There wasn’t much of anything else to do, and we had been here long enough that looking at the overgrown hedges and shit really started bothering us.
Lea and I have improved every house that we’ve lived in for an extended period of time, whether we owned them or not. It’s become kind of a habit for us.
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The pool had been bothering us for awhile. It wasn’t on good shape when we moved in. Additional time, and continued use, didn’t do anything to improve its appearance. So we made a deal with Lord Mark, our landlord. He would pay for the prep work, paint, and any miscellaneous supplies. And we would hire a painter to paint the pool.
We drained the pool and let it dry out for three months. In January we had all of the pool surfaces prepped by Tacho, and Lea and I pressured washed every inch to get it ready for paint. Francisco Flores Bernini, my friend, caddy, and the guy who has painted almost the entire inside of our house, painted the pool a deep, dark blue. Jaime Mendoza, our property manager, had 40,000 gallons of water delivered in two huge trucks.
I have to say it turned out better than I thought it would. If we ever have any visitors here, I think they’ll love it, too. It’s the jewel in the crown of the resort once more. Or it will be once we get the solar heating system working again.
The solar heater is on the roof of the master bedroom, and it is a Mexican technological wonder. It’s so complicated even other Mexicans haven’t been able to understand it. We’ve had a few guys come over to look at it to repair it, and they all say it just needs to be replaced.
We’re going to start that process this week, according to Jaime. We’ll see how that goes. There’s more than one person involved in finding a solution to this problem. It might take awhile to get them all together over here. Personally, I think we’ll end up with a new heating system eventually, simply because that’s what everyone has been saying we’re going to need. But this is Mexico. When it comes to stuff like unto this, nothing is ever as straightforward as it seems.
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When I was a kid, I spent almost every summer working in the fields on my grandparent’s farm by day, and was preyed upon by my pedophile uncle by night. As a result, I had no interest in becoming a farmer when I grew up. And yet, as an adult, I have done far more gardening than I ever thought I would. And that is all because of my lovely supermodel wife.
Lea loves gardens, but she doesn’t want to do any gardening. That’s where I come in. And the Five Languages of Love. I’m a guy. So you can believe me when I say I had no idea there were any love languages.
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This couple gets married. On their honeymoon night the guy looks at his beautiful bride and says, “Hey Mrs. Stevenson, you wanna retire into the bedroom and let me fuck your brains out?”
“That is just so rude!” his wife snaps. “I knew I wasn’t marrying a Casanova or anything, but couldn’t you at least try to be polite about it?” The guy thinks about for a minute, runs his hand through his hair and decides to try again.
“You’re right, honey. I apologize, and I’m really sorry I said that. Now, could you please pass the pussy?”
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Lea’s favorite love language is Acts of Service. In my case, that ended up translating into Build me a garden. Or in Lea’s case, a lots of gardens. I constructed at least three gardens for her in Minnesota. In Arizona I transformed our backyard into a desert oasis. Okay, I didn’t do anything except sign the check in that instance. But the results were worth it.
Here at the resort, the gardens had been completely swallowed by the Royal and Ancient Hedgerow and all of the untrimmed vines that covered the fence in the backyard. All Todd and I had to do was find them again. And I should add that Lea played her part in hedgerow annihilation, too.
Lea doesn’t like digging in the dirt because it ruins her manicures. If I spent any money on taking care of my fingernails, I probably wouldn’t want to do anything to fuck them up either. Oddly enough, Lea actually enjoys trimming shrubs and vines. It’s that whole neat and orderly thing again.
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All of the things I’ve already mentioned are true, but there’s one more reason why I decided to tackle the daunting project of hedge demolition and yard improvement. I really suck at sitting on my ass all day listening to the TV. Yeah, it kind of surprised me to discover this, too.
Lea says she’s not surprised. She apparently understands me better than I do. We have been married to each other for over three decades, so her comprehension of me isn’t all that surprising. I’m pretty sure I understand her better than she understands herself, too.
Speaking of TV, I’ve been able to get our streaming devices to actually work on a consistently reliable basis. So we’ve actually been watching a couple of series: The Crown, and The Mandalorian.
I’ve found that I actually like the young Queen Elizabeth II. And I detest pretty much everyone else in her family, the fucking royal sissifated sniffle-snaffles that they are.
The Mandalorian guy reminds me of The Rifleman. It was a TV western way back when I was kid. They were big back then, and there were a lots of them to choose from. I really liked The Rifleman when I was a kid. I watched a rerun of it a few years ago on a quiet Saturday morning, and I changed the channel after five minutes. I thought The Rifleman was just about the stupidest fuckin’ show I had ever seen.
That’s pretty much what I think of The Mandalorian too. It’s very predictable. The dialog is mostly boring and repetitive — except Baby Yoda is so damn cute I put up with all the stupididity just for him. I’ve watched five or six episodes. I’m still waiting for the Baby Yoda kid to say something. I don’t know if he ever speaks, but I’m hoping like hell that he does. And soon.
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Earlier in this post I said that restoring the gardens was expensive, and you night think that I spent a bunch of money buying plants to put in the gardens. That would be incorrect. I’ve probably spent less than two hundred bucks on new plants.
The expense was hiring someone to haul off all the shit we chopped down.
A guy named Guillermo was driving by the resort in his beat-up pickup when he saw Todd dragging a bunch of branches out to the curb to be picked up by the local garbagemen. He asked if we would be willing to pay him to do it.
Our garbage guys can haul off only a very limited amount of branches and stuff at one time, and everyone in our development always has a bunch of yard debris that they need to get rid of. If we had waited for them to perform this task for us, we would still have a mountain of debris to get rid of, and we started almost five months ago. For the very reasonable fee of $25 bucks a truckload, Guillermo hauled away about 20 truckloads of branches and vines and shit whenever we needed him.
It ended up being a good deal for all of us. Guillermo couldn’t find any work because of COVID-19, so we were an absolute godsend to him when he was desperately looking for a way to make some money. And we were able to demolish stuff at a much faster rate because we weren’t limited by the local garbage collection limitations.
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With the debris removed, we could focus on making the yard and gardens all pretty and cutey once more. We took the hedgerow out in sections, therefore, we also reconstructed the gardens in sections. With that in mind, we now have gardens that are very well established on one hand, to gardens that are just beginning to sprout flowers. If that pattern continues to repeat itself, there will always be one part of the gardens in bloom, no matter what time of the year it is. There isn’t really a winter season here. It’s more like unto varying degrees of summer all the time.
Now you understand why I think this place is a paradise.
We’ve been pleasantly surprised by the flowers that started growing once they could see the light of day once more, and that was what convinced us that our resort used to have gardens at one time, long ago in the past.
Morning glories, brown-eyed susans, amaryllis, dahlias, and lantana have sprung to life, adding pops of color along the south side of the house. Lilies and geraniums started growing around the bougainvillea and the monster poinsettia tree. At least seven varieties of vines are climbing the stone walls and fences that enclose our grounds. And we uncovered a mango tree, a papaya tree, and an avocado tree.
Unfortunately, flowers aren’t the only things that have sprouted up in the once-forsaken gardens. We also have a very impressive crop of weeds growing, too. This is where the helluvalot of work started coming into play for me. And Todd. And it involves the two W’s of the first G of my version of this stage of my development in life.
Watering and Weeding.
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To the best of my knowledge, there’s no such thing as a garden that doesn’t require any maintenance. If there is, I sure as hell didn’t plant it here. We used to have a gardener — well, he was more of a yard maintenance guy than he was a gardener — and that was our main reason for letting him go. He was one big reason the Royal and Ancient Hedgerow had grown to such outrageous proportions.
Miguel is no longer our gardener, but we did hire him to maintain the pool. He’s probably the only person on the planet that knows how the enigmatic plumbing for the pool works. Just in cases you were wondering, he likes what we’ve done with the gardens.
According to a reliable source that I can no longer remember, the one thing that all plants need to live is water. That makes sense to me, so I’m not going to research it any further. It’s the Dry Season down here right now. It won’t rain in any appreciable amounts until the middle of June. The gardens we decided to uncover need to be watered on pretty much a daily basis. At the very least, every two days.
Yep, I’m going to be busy for awhile.
Todd tends to set up sprinklers to water any part of the yard or gardens that he takes care of. I’m a bit more hands-on. I bought a shitload of hoses and wands and nozzles with a variety of settings and strengths, and I more or less water everything by hand. It takes me a few hours every day to make the rounds to all of the gardens. It’s one of the reasons why it’s taken me so long to write this post. I think I’ve been working on it for at least a month. Maybe two… I honestly can’t remember.
I like to see how my plants are doing. Are they looking okay? Do they need more water? Less water? More sunlight? What’s that fucking thing? Is that a new weed I’ve never seen before? Is it a flower? Maybe I’ll leave it there for awhile and see what it grows into… That’s kind of how I roll when I’m watering the gardens.
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Gardening is a fairly mindless enterprise for most people. There is nothing mindless for me. My mind is always running, and it hasn’t been my buddy for quite some time. I have to seriously counter the natural tendency of my mind to make me feel as bad about myself as it possibly can. It’s become more or less a full-time job lately.
Age has given me some perspective on my life. This is the second G of my version of this stage of my development in life. Being sober has given me an extended period of time of reasonably sane behavior. But the more I seem willing to embrace myself, warts and all, the more my mind seems to think it needs to step in and do something about that.
It’s probably still mad at me for quitting drinking…
We’ll work this out sooner or later. I’m smarter than my brain thinks I am, and I am way more patient than it is. One of these days it will realize that and leave me alone.
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A weed, by definition, is any plant that you don’t want growing in your yard or garden. And they are pretty much the bane of my existence right now. Mostly because weeds don’t come to you. You have to get down to their level to get rid of them. My back is no longer built for that kind of movement. And I’m sure this is true for more people than just me, but for every weed I remove, ten weeds seem appear out of the ground to take its place.
And I don’t know what is in the soil here, but it took a toll on my hands. After one week of weeding, the skin on my hands took on the texture of 90 grit sandpaper. Then my skin started to crack around the beds my fingernails. It surprises me how something so tiny and seemingly insignificant can hurt so goddamn much. I couldn’t have typed anything even if I had wanted to. I could barely hold a golf club without breaking into tears.
I’ve started wearing work gloves out of sheer self-preservation. And I’m applying lotion on a daily basis now. I think my hands will recover and return to their previous state of feeling like I’ve never done an honest days’ work with them.
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Most of the garden restoration was accomplished simply by relocating the plants we already had to different locations, which was another back-breaking exercise for me, and seeds. I love seeds because they’re inexpensive and I don’t have to bend over to get them onto the ground. I more or less throw them in the general direction of where I want them to grow, and add water.
I’ve kind of become the Marky Flower Seed of Mexico.
My helter-skelter approach to gardening drives Todd crazy. He’s much more scientific and methodical in his approach to. He tests the soil and makes his own compost. He grows a lots of plants in small pots, then replants them exactly where he wants them to be, in more or less specific numbers.
Last year I sowed a few hundred seeds and almost nothing grew. This year I sowed a few hundred thousand seeds, and almost all of them germinated. Yeah, I don’t get it either. It’s one of the mysteries of Life in Mexico. I may not understand why it happened, but I’m not going to lose any sleep over it. And I really don’t care what Todd thinks when it comes to my gardening techniques. I have created the gardens of ten thousand dreams here, and I am well pleased.
Marigolds, zinnias, sweet alyssum, and cosmos. Lavender, lupines, bachelor’s buttons, and daisies. Calendaria, dianthus, and carnations. Salvia, asters, delphiniums, and mums. Sunflowers, snapdragons. scarlet pimpernel, and foxglove. Ageratum, hollyhocks, nasturtiums, and sweet william.
We have a lots of garden space, therefore, we have ended up with a boatload of flowers to try to fill them all. Most of these I’ve grown from seeds or cuttings from monster-sized plants. And almost all of these plants produce more seeds. I may never have to buy another packet seeds for as long as I live, even if I live for another two decades. There’s no such thing as too many flowers. Or too many types of flowers.
The end result of our labors has been so dramatic that it’s hard to adequately describe. It’s like unto a caveman/hippie/beatnik guy that decided to cut his hair and join the human race. It opened up the outdoors and let the sun shine in. Now all we have to do is keep it trimmed and manicured until we die, and then it will become someone else’s problem.
For now, there are three of us on the job so it hasn’t become a major ordeal for anyone. But we all can see that it’s something we’re going to have to be very proactive about or we’ll end up another Hedgerow from Hell in no time flat.
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And that brings me to the third and final G of my version of this stage of my development in life. Golf. Prior to the onset of all the COVID-19 lockdowns and precautions and stuff, I was consistently scoring in the mid-80’s. I fixin’ to get ready to start to begin to break 80, and go onto the Professional Senior’s Tour.
And then one day, for no particular reason, pretty much almost everything about my golf game just fell apart, and it stayed there. I was scoring in the mid-90’s and golf became a whole lots less fun than it had ever been.
I’ve tried to remain philosophical and positive about sucking at golf once more. Everyone goes through a slump. You’ve just got to play through it until it gets bored and goes away to ruin someone else’s game. I’m pretty sure that’s how it works.
That’s how dieting works. For example, if you lose several pounds, they float around through the atmosphere until they run into someone else, and that person suddenly gains several pounds. I’ve lost 15 pounds since I retired. And I’d bet at least one person reading this has gained 15 pounds in the last four and half years.
I rest my case.
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And that’s about it from the Chula Vista Resort and Spa for now. We’re still accepting reservations, and we now offer special Friends and Family Rates that will be available for a limited time — like unto those TV ads for Dr. Ho’s Circulation Promoter and Pain Relief System.
Y’all take care of yourselves and stay safe out there. I’ve come to the conclusion that gardening is an apt metaphor for life. Plant a lots of seeds. Keep the weeds away. And water as needed.
When you look at that way, life isn’t away where near as complicated.
Reflections/Life in Mexico 