Bouncing between two worlds

Here in San Pablo Etla, I am spending the days outside cleaning up the gardens and prepping for the dry season.  Just last week I was raking leaves in Boston.  This kind of work is great therapy and fortunately, there is always an abundance of it, so I get lots of therapy.

Up there, it was prepping for winter, battening down the hatches until I return in February.  Here, most of the annuals, like the cosmos, zinnias, marigolds, veggies, are spent and are now on the compost pile, although I saved tons of seeds for next year.  In the lot next door, where I've planted lots of perennials and trees, the challenge is how to get them through to the next rainy season, which is six or seven months down the road.  Because I've only been in this house a few months, I don't have much of any compost or mulch, so I have to get creative.  The lot doesn't have water, but I have rigged up a hose over the wall and all of a sudden, after a day or two of digging, weeding, mulching and watering, the place looks good.  Let Nature take her course.  But no rain for seven months?  It is always a challenge.

And that brings me back to the post's title, Bouncing between two worlds.  There is always a culture shock going between Oaxaca and El Norte.  Here to there, back and forth.  Oh, my head.  They are such different places, such different cultures, but both exist in a world which is getting closer, smaller, everyday with Twitter and Facebook and all the intertubes.... The Hunger Games opened at Cineopolis last week and Starbucks is here now...

For some reason, this trip north/south was a more introspective one than normal, but what is normal?  Each trip is different, because I am different for each trip.  Fortunately, now I have the time to contemplate the dancing clouds and figure all this stuff out.  I can just go out into the hot, late November sun, with the winds blowing down off the mountains and hack away at the cement-like earth, knowing that, just in time, the rains will return.  Relax.

UPDATE:  It is an hour later and it is raining!  A nice, long, gentle rain - unbelievable!