Life is like a box of farm-fresh vegetables. You never know what you are going to get.
I know. I know. I can hear Rose Alcantara’s voice already, “Don’t play with your food!”
I can’t help it. Such an abundance. It demands a shot at Still Life before it is reduced to gourmet.
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My name is … well, never mind my name.
Just know that I walk these cobblestone streets and … I see things.
Things I can’t explain. Things that need no explanation. Things that are new to me but are as old as time. Things that are marked down 20 percent for this day only. Things that are here today and gone tomorrow, probably back to the United States. Things that say something. Things that have nothing to say but will buy you a drink, just for the company. Things that I find interesting but my dog doesn’t.
You know, things.
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It is popular and entirely appropriate in San Miguel de Allende to say “You never know what’s behind a closed door.”
Entrances on San Miguel streets give you no hint at all as to what lies behind them.
The most humble of doors can open onto a garden of Eden, a fairyland, a small village, a rabbit warren of homes, a vast and empty park, a stately hacienda, ancient ruins, a private town square surrounded by stately homes, ageless and towering trees, private roads – well, whatever imagination and money can conjure.
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A reader pointed out yesterday that my blog post on flowers which included some from Cape Cod and Newport, Rhode Island, was sorely lacking, in his opinion.
He essentially asked, How can you post pictures from these two places and not include a single ocean view?
In the writer’s own words, “No cape or Newport there..no ocean in site.”
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You want to hear about how my IT wizard supercharged my streaming media speed so that I can actually watch a movie uninterrupted (sometimes) off my FireStick?
Nah. Me neither.
How about the coming Sriracha shortage because drought conditions in northern Mexico are killing off the chiles harvest and the hot-sauce factory has closed?
You already know that one, huh?
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That’s true. I only saw half the Crazies parade this morning in San Miguel de Allende.
The upper half.
Even at 6-foot-2 I wasn’t tall enough, or close enough to watch the Dia de Los Locos parade with such an unobstructed view. Man, there were a lot of people out there, and they got to the curb long before I did. What’s fair is fair.
Therefore, you may notice that many of my photographs are filtered through a variety of hairstyles, various hats, the occasional waving hands and fingers, hands holding iPhones in front of my iPhone, and the odd umbrella.
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We’ve been dodging in and out of the rain since we began walking the Wild Atlantic Way in County Clare four days ago. This morning, awakening to the steady patter of rain on the windows of the Wild Atlantic Lodge in Ballyvaughan, it feels like we’ve run out of dodges.
Did we really want to walk to Carran — or Carron? It is spelled both ways, often side by side, and nobody seems to really care. I asked. “Either way,” is the most common response.
One of the Burren walking guides calls this leg “extremely rewarding and scenic …”
Well, that is encouraging. Except it is dumping buckets outside.
But wait, there is more.
Continue reading“A horse is a horse, of course, of course,
And no one can talk to a horse of course
That is, of course, unless the horse is …”
… a new mural on Callejon de Guadiana in San Miguel de Allende.
Which just goes to show that a mural doesn’t have to be big and cosmic to have an impact. This little piece is a showstopper on the alley in Colonia Guadiana.
I couldn’t stop smiling. And I wanted to give it a sugar cube.
(Special thanks to the groundbreaking cultural icon of early-1960’s sitcom television, “Mr. Ed,” and with a sense of relief that the show did not premiere in the late-1960’s psychedelic era in living color.)
Just kidding. I couldn’t possibly post a video of mariachis performing every day.
Or could I?
No. An occasional mariachi video is quite enough.
I like these guys who can be seen and heard in Centro, San Miguel de Allende, on many evenings. They have style and elegance, multi-generational, and the white suits stand out in a park filled with tourists in T-shirts and too-tight shorts.
At any rate, enjoy.
It seems cruel to talk about Spring and plants and flowers at the end of January, but here we are.
In a week or so, we celebrate the 40th day after the birth of Christ, the day on which the Mother Mary took her child to the temple.
In tandem with this religious celebration, many gardeners, growers, plant suppliers, and others gather in a San Miguel park for a week and turn it into a veritable Garden of Eden. Hundreds of people flock to the park to buy flowers, cacti, bushes, fruit trees, herbs, ornamentals, vines, ground covers even giant earthen pats to contain them all. If it grows, it goes.
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Musings, Magic, San Miguel and More 